Title:
- Alan Turing: The Enigma
Authors:
Genres:
Reviews:
| Review | Author |
|---|---|
| Andrew Hodges - Alan Turing: The Enigma - 5 | Kvetch |
Editions:
| # | Date | Publisher | Binding | Cover |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1983-00-00 | Simon & Schuster |  |
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- Blurb:
- Alan Turing (1912 - 1954) was a British mathematician who made history: His breaking of the German U-boat Enigma cipher in World War II ensured Allied-American control of the Atlantic. But Turing"s vision went far beyond the desperate wartime struggle. Already in the 1930s he had defined the concept of the universal machine, which underpins the computer revolution. In 1945 he was a pioneer of electronic computer design. But Turing"s true goal was the scientific understanding of the mind, brought out in the drama and wit of the famous "Turing test" for machine intelligence, and his prophecy for the twenty-first century. Drawn into the cockpit of world events and the forefront of technological innovation, Alan Turing was also an innocent and unpretentious gay man trying to live in a society that criminalized him. In 1952, he revealed his homosexuality and was forced to participate in a humiliating treatment program, and was ever after regarded as a security risk. His suicide in 1954 remains one of the many enigmas in an astonishing life story. "As vivid a picture as one could hope for a most complex and intriguing man," says Douglas Hofstadter, author of Godel, Escher, Bach. Both a compelling narrative and a work of scholarship, Alan Turing: The Enigma is the definitive biography of one of the greatest minds of the modern world.