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This is the original book that inspired the critically acclaimed film, The Imitation Game, about gay genius Alan Turing, and starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley and Matthew Goode.
It is only a slight exaggeration to say that the British mathematician Alan Turing saved the Allies from the Nazis, invented the computer and artificial intelligence, and anticipated gay liberation by decades.
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 mind and soul-destroying treatment by the government he had served so brilliantly and faithfully. In 1954, aged 41, Alan Turing took his own life. This acclaimed biography, with a new preface by the author that addresses Turing’s royal pardon in 2013, is the definitive account of an extraordinary mind and life.
Paperback, 768 Pages, Orig. Publ. 1992, This Ed. Publ. 2014
Author: Andrew Hodges