Alan Turing: The Enigma
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3.4 • 16 Ratings
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
The official book behind the Academy Award-winning film The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley
Alan Turing was the mathematician whose cipher-cracking transformed the Second World War. Taken on by British Intelligence in 1938, as a shy young Cambridge don, he combined brilliant logic with a flair for engineering. In 1940 his machines were breaking the Enigma-enciphered messages of Nazi Germany’s air force. He then headed the penetration of the super-secure U-boat communications.
But his vision went far beyond this achievement. Before the war he had invented 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 took his own life.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Andrew Hodges’ biography of Alan Turing—the inspiration behind the 2014 movie The Imitation Game—offers a fascinating portrait of a complicated genius. Following the British mathematician from his time as an ambitious Cambridge student to his 1952 conviction on charges of homosexuality, the book looks at both Turing’s work and personal life in gripping detail. Turing played a pivotal role in helping build one of the world’s first computing devices, developed in a wartime effort to break Nazi naval code. Rich with helpful diagrams and excerpts of personal letters, Alan Turing: The Enigma is a sharply written and furiously researched story.
Customer Reviews
Tedious
Not a bad read, but it takes forever to get through every minute detail of Alan's life. Way too much tedious and unnecessary information. It's a little misleading, for if the movie was based on this book, it would take three hours for Alan to finish school. I wanted to like it, but it took every effort to tolerate it.