Turing, Alan in The Books Store

Alan had proved that there was no "miraculous machine" that could solve all mathematical problems, but in the process he had discovered something almost equally miraculous, the idea of a universal machine that could take over the work of any machine.

During World War II, Turing was the intellectual star of Bletchley Park, the secret British cryptography unit. His work cracking the German's Enigma machine code was, in many ways, the first triumph of computer science. And Turing died because his identity as a homosexual was incompatible with cold-war ideas of security, implemented with machines and remorseless logic: "It was his own invention, and it killed the goose that laid the golden eggs."

Andrew Hodges's remarkable insight weaves Turing's mathematical and computer work with his personal life to produce one of the best biographies of our time, and the basis of the Derek Jacobi movie Breaking the Code. Hodges has the mathematical knowledge to explain the intellectual significance of Turing's work, while never losing sight of the human and social picture:

In this sense his life belied his work, for it could not be contained by the discrete state machine. At every stage his life raised questions about the connection (or lack of it) between the mind and the body, thought and action, intelligence and operations, science and society, the individual and history.

Alan Turing's fundamental contributions to computing led to the development of modern computing technology, and his work continues to inspire researchers in computing science and beyond. This book is the definitive collection of commemorative essays, and the distinguished contributors have expertise in such diverse fields as artificial intelligence, natural computing, mathematics, physics, cryptology, cognitive studies, philosophy and anthropology.

The volume spans the entire rich spectrum of Turing's life, research work and legacy. New light is shed on the future of computing science by visionary Ray Kurzweil. Notable contributions come from the philosopher Daniel Dennett, the Turing biographer Andrew Hodges, and the distinguished logician Martin Davis, who provides a first critical essay on an emerging and controversial field termed hypercomputation. A special feature of the book is the play by Valeria Patera which tackles the scandal surrounding the last apple, and presents as an enigma the life, death and destiny of the man who did so much to decipher the Enigma code during the Second World War.

Other chapters are modern reappraisals of Turing's work on computability, and deal with the major philosophical questions raised by the Turing Test, while the book also contains essays addressing his less well-known ideas on Fibonacci phyllotaxis and connectionism.

Author Paul Strathern sets Turing's accomplishments in their historical context. He starts with the long prehistory of the computer--its roots in devices such as the abacus, the slide rule, and Charles Babbage's remarkably sophisticated 19th-century "difference engine." Strathern then moves deftly through the great mathematical debates that led to Turing's formulation of the abstract "universal computing machine" in the mid-1930s. The author also lucidly presents Turing's contributions to turning that abstraction into a concrete mechanism, beginning with Turing's work on the Colossus machine, which cracked Germany's secret codes during World War II.