Andrew Hodges: The Alan Turing: Enigma (1983/2012)
Filed under book | Tags: · biography, computing, cryptography, history of computing, history of mathematics, mathematics, war
The full story behind the persecuted genius of wartime codebreaking and the computer revolution.
A new edition to celebrate Alan Turing’s centenary, includes a new foreword by the author and a preface by Douglas Hofstadter.
Alan Turing was the extraordinary Cambridge mathematician who masterminded the cracking of the German Enigma ciphers and transformed the Second World War. But his vision went far beyond this crucial achievement. Before the war he had formulated the concept of the universal machine, and in 1945 he turned this into the first design for a digital computer.
Turing’s far-sighted plans for the digital era forged ahead into a vision for Artificial Intelligence. However, in 1952 his homosexuality rendered him a criminal and he was subjected to humiliating treatment. In 1954, aged 41, Alan Turing committed suicide and one of Britain’s greatest scientific minds was lost.
First published in 1983, Burnett Books
Centenary edition
With Foreword by Douglas Hofstadter
Publisher Vintage, Random House, 2012
ISBN 1448137810, 9781448137817
624 pages
notes by the author
publisher
google books
PDF (MOBI)
Comment (0)Leave a Reply