Alan Turing: The Enigma

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Alan Turing was a brilliant Cambridge mathematician who has been described as the father of the modern computer. He masterminded the cracking of the German Enigma code and was caught up in the secrecy and bureaucracy of World War II and afterwards - continually frustrated in his desire to build a machine which could think, as those with power over him feared both his homosexuality and indiscretion. This is an account of his life, which ended by his own hand.

Reviews

One of the finest scientific biographies Ive ever read: authoritative, superbly researched, deeply sympathetic and beautifully told * Sylvia Nasar, author of A Beautiful Mind *
Andrew Hodges' book is of exemplary scholarship and sympathy. Intimate, perceptive and insightful, its also the most readable biography Ive picked up in some time * Time Out *
A first-rate presentation of the life of a first-rate scientific mind * New York Times Book Review *
One of the finest scientific biographies ever written * New Yorker *
A first-rate presentation of the life of a first-rate scientific mindit is hard to imagine a more thoughtful and warm biography than this one -- Douglas Hofstadter * New York Times Book Review *

Author Bio

Andrew Hodges is Tutor in Mathematics at Wadham College, Oxford University. His classic text of 1983, since translated into several languages, created a new kind of biography, with mathematics, science, computing, war history, philosophy and gay liberation woven into a single personal narrative. He is an active contributor to the mathematics of fundamental physics, as a follower of Roger Penrose. See www.turing.org.uk for further material.