Customer Reviews

Alan Turing: The Enigma

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Without this book, the real Alan Turing might fade into obscurity or at least the easy caricature of an eccentric British mathematician. And to the relief of many, because Turing was a difficult person: an unapologetic homosexual in post-victorian england; ground-breaking mathematician; utterly indifferent to social conventions; arrogantly original (working from first principles, ignoring precedents); with no respect for professional boundaries (a 'pure' mathematician who taught himself engineering and electronics).

His best-known work is his 1936 'Computable Numbers' paper, defining a self-modifying, stored-program machine. He used these ideas to help build code-breaking methods and machinery at Bletchley Park, England's WWII electronic intelligence center. This work, much still classified today, led directly to the construction of the world's first stored-program, self-modifying computer, in 1948.

Computers were always symbol-manipulators to Alan, not 'number crunchers', the predominant view even to von Neumann, and into the 60's and 70's. He designed many basic software concepts (interpreter, floating point), most of which were ignored (he umm wasn't exactly good at promoting his ideas). By 1948 Alan had moved on to studying human and machine intelligence, as a user of computers, again with his lack of social niceties and radical thinking, some of his ideas were baffling or embarrassing until 'rediscovered' decades later as brilliant insights into intelligence. His 'Turing test' of intelligence dates from this period, and is still widely misunderstood.

Poor Alan; his refusal to deceive himself or others and "go along" with the conventions of the time regarding sexuality caused him (and other homosexuals then) great problems; early Cold War England was not a good time to be gay, or a misfit, especially one with deep knowledge of war-time secrecy (he was technical crypto liason to the U.S., and one of the few with broad knowledge of operations at Bletchley, since he defined so much of it, in a time of extreme compartmentalization). His sexual escapades eventually got him in trouble, and his increasing isolation and the fact that he simply couldn't acknowledge some of his life's work due to secrecy, probably influenced his suicide at the age of 42.

I first discovered Turing-the-person in A HISTORY OF COMPUTING IN THE 20TH CENTURY (Metropolis, Howlett, Gian-Carlo Rota; Acedemic Press, 1980), where I.J. Good wrote, "we didn't know he was a homosexual until after the war... if the security people had found out [and removed him]... we might have lost the war". This led me to look for books on Turing, and then the Hodges book magically appeared on the shelf.

I am grateful that Hodges researched his life as well as his work, as far as the data allows. Knowing the whole is always important, but I think critical in Alan Turing's life.

My only complaint with the book is that it makes a number of assumptions or implications that seem to require knowledge of British culture, both contemporary and of the period, which I still didn't pick up on a re-reading. But it barely detracts from the book.

Clearly, I rate this one of the most important books I've ever read.

It is a pleasure to see that the wonderful biography of Alan Turing by Andrew Hodges is once again available. With loving care, Hodges follows Turing's life from the clumsy child whose largely absentee parents were caught up in maintaining the British imperial presence in India, to the mathematically precocious adolescent facing teachers for whom mathematics imparted a bad smell to a room, finally coming into his own at Cambridge University where he wrote the paper that provided the conceptual underpinnings of the all-purpose computers we all use today. Hodges carefully explains Turing's crucial contributions to breaking the secret codes that the German military used all through the Second World War, confident in the security provided by their "Enigma" machines. Turing's highly successful war-time practical work known only to a few, his efforts after the war to enable the construction of a general purpose electronic computer were frustrated by bureaucratic mismanagement and by a lack of appreciation of the value of his ideas, many of which came to the fore much later. A burglary of his house that a prudent man would have kept to himself, led to Turing's homosexuality coming to official notice when he reported the crime to the police. He was prosecuted for "gross indecency" and sentenced to a course of injections of estrogen intended to diminish his sex drive. We will never know how much this barbaric treatment contributed to his suicide or what he might have accomplished had his life not been cut short. This is a book that will fascinate readers interested in the history of the computer, in the story of how the German submarine fleet threatening to strangle England was defeated, and in the tragic story of the persecution for his sex life of a man who should have been prized as a national hero.

Without this book, the real Alan Turing might fade into obscurity or at least the easy caricature of an eccentric British mathematician. And to the relief of many, because Turing was a difficult person: an unapologetic homosexual in post-victorian england; ground-breaking mathematician; utterly indifferent to social conventions; arrogantly original (working from first principles, ignoring precedents); with no respect for professional boundaries (a 'pure' mathematician who taught himself engineering and electronics).

His best-known work is his 1936 'Computable Numbers' paper, defining a self-modifying, stored-program machine. He used these ideas to help build code-breaking methods and machinery at Bletchley Park, England's WWII electronic intelligence center. This work, much still classified today, led directly to the construction of the world's first stored-program, self-modifying computer, in 1948.

Computers were always symbol-manipulators, to Alan, not 'number crunchers', the predominant view even to von Neumann, and into the 60's and 70's. He designed many basic software concepts (interpreter, floating point), most of which were ignored (he wasn't exactly good at promoting his ideas). By 1948 Alan had moved on to studying human and machine intelligence, as a user of computers, again with his lack of social niceties and radical thinking, some of his ideas were baffling or embarrassing until 'rediscovered' decades later as brilliant insights into intelligence. His 'Turing test' of intelligence dates from this period, and is still widely misunderstood.

Poor Alan; his refusal to deceive himself or others and "go along" with the conventions of the time regarding sexuality caused him (and other homosexuals then) great problems; early Cold War England was not a good time to be gay, or a misfit, especially one with deep knowledge of war-time secrecy (he was technical crypto liason to the U.S., and one of the few with broad knowledge of operations at Bletchley, since he defined so much of it, in a time of extreme compartmentalization). His sexual escapades eventually got him in trouble, and his increasing isolation and the fact that he simply couldn't acknowledge some of his life's work due to secrecy, probably influenced his suicide at the age of 42.

I first discovered Turing-the-person in A HISTORY OF COMPUTING IN THE 20TH CENTURY (Metropolis, Howlett, Gian-Carlo Rota; Acedemic Press, 1980), where I.J. Good wrote, "we didn't know he was a homosexual until after the war... if the security people had found out [and removed him]... we might have lost the war". This led me to look for books on Turing, and then the Hodges book magically appeared on the shelf.

I am grateful that Hodges researched his life as well as his work, as far as the data allows. Knowing the whole is always important, but I think critical in Alan Turing's life. Clearly, I rate this one of the most important books I've ever read.

One could make the case that Alan Turing was neglected by the historians of science because much of his most important work was kept secret. One could also make the case that Turing's relatively open homosexuality, culminating in conflict with the law, led to some reluctance among biographers. There would be some truth to either claim, but it seems to me that the main reason why Turing has been ill treated by historians is simply that he was a half-century ahead of his time, and that only now is the significance of his work becoming generally understood.

The turning point in the greatly increased apprecation for Turning was the publication of this biography by Hodges, originally in 1983. Lapsing out of print until recently, it would be no exaggeration to say that this book sparked a widespread reappraisal of Turing in an age more able to understand him, both professionally and personally. (It would be difficult, for example, to cite any other scientific biography which inspired a play that was performed in London and on Broadway in New York: "Breaking the Code," written by Hugh Whitemore in 1988, and which was made into a 1997 television play that is available on VHS.) It is difficult to imagine that this biography will be allowed to go out of print again.

Turing's key contribution to computer science was in realizing that computers are not merely number crunchers, but were capable of manipulating general purpose symbols. Certainly, it is natural to represent numbers with symbols inside computing machines, especially because there is such a universally accepted habit of working number symbols with pen and paper. In achieving this critical insight that the symbols inside computers are perfectly general, Turing tied computer science into a large body of traditional work in mathematics reaching back centuries to the work of Leibniz and encompassing the more recent work of such logicians as Boole, Frege, Russell, and Godel. Less widely understood is that it is this same general purpose representational characteristic of computers which has made possible the applications of computers which matter to people, from e-mail and the web to digital music and the little box that decides whether to deploy the airbag in your car.

Contemporaries of Turing tended to see the computer as a sort of automatic adding machine, suitable for calculating ballistics tables and little else. Yet Turing had completed most of the underpinning for his Theory of Computation before the onset of the Second World War, when he was called upon to build a secret computer for cryptanalytic purposes. The very fact that Turing wondered how to decide if a machine could be said to "think," which was the subject of his famous "Turing Test," was itself a revolutionary idea, the question being more significant at the time than any answer.

To a large extent, the ideas first articulated by Turing, regardless of how directly or indirectly their influence has been felt, are at the root of a changed perception of the world which we now all share at the beginning of the 21st Century. This view of the world as a kind of computer has replaced the industrial era view of the world as a kind of clockwork machine. We are all, in effect, on a quest to find out which propositions are "computable" and "decidable."

Combined with this substantial reassessment of Turing's professional contributions, there has been an enormous change in the way British and American society have come to perceive homosexuality. Viewed as a psychological disease and a criminal act at the time of Turing's difficulties with the law, Britain would decriminalize private consensual homosexual relations a few years after his death and begin recognizing a civil liberties interest emerging at about the time of the initial publication of Hodges' book. This gulf of decades has come to reinforce a view of Turing as a man very much outside of his own time, almost constitutionally incapable of thinking as convention would dictate about anything at all.

It is a great irony that the Allied war effort -- and perhaps the Cold War effort -- could not abide a man whom it viewed as a security risk, despite the undeniable fact that his work at a minimum saved a great many lives and quite probably shortened the war. Indeed, it is a great tragedy that the democratic state he helped to save then turned and ungratefully persecuted him, likely driving him to his death.

Few scientific biographies possess the massive sweep of human drama in the crucible of history, and few biographical subjects warrant such treatment. Turing and his definitive biography by Hodges are emphatic exceptions.

Few people outside computer science know how important Alan Turing really is - he just might be the most important person to have lived in the 20th century - and it is quite shocking that this is the only biography of him (other than one written by his mother) that there is. Even more shocking is that in this age that is absolutely Turing's, that his biography could go out of print! I know it will never happen again.

This book is a work of 1st class scholarship, and obvious love. The world is a better place because of it.

Overall an enjoyable book with sensitive treatment of Turing's lifestyle. Whilst the exposition of Turing's earlier work is well structured that of the later years is somewhat less detailed. The closing chapters are less than satisfying, however this may be due to the tradegy of Turing's death. An excellent introduction to the concept of the "Turing Machine".

This is a book that should be read by anyone with an interest in the history of mathematics, computer science or the second world war. Alan Turing, the inventor of the abstract Turing machine, was an incredible individual who is still underappreciated for his accomplishments. The Turing machine is an abstract device that "consists" of an infinite paper tape and a read head that can move forwards and backwards altering what is on the tape. However, despite its' simplicity, so far it has been found to be a model for all aspects of computing. It may prove to be a model for all actions that can be performed by a computer, but that problem is as yet unsolved. It is amazing that he invented it before computers as we know them really existed.
However, his most significant accomplishment was as a principal of the British group who broke the "unbreakable" German codes during the second world war. When people speak about how the British prevailed in that war, the first person mentioned is always Winston Churchill and there is no question that he did more than anyone else to lead them to victory. However, given the limited resources the British had compared to the Germans, the precise knowledge of German intentions allowed the British to concentrate those resources so that they could achieve local superiority. Which was the only way they could win some of the battles. Therefore, it is no exaggeration to say that Turing's contribution to victory ranks as high as that of anyone else other than Churchill. That story alone would have been a fascinating tale, and although we may not be getting the whole story, it is complete enough to understand how valuable his contribution was. That portion of the book is very well done and worthy of being read by anyone interested in how the British managed to hang on long enough for the United States to enter the war.
Unfortunately, Turing came to a tragic end, apparently dying by his own hand after it became known that he was a homosexual. This was after the war and despite his amazing talents and previous contributions, his homosexuality caused him to be branded as a security risk. The cold war was just starting, with the increase in paranoia and baseless accusations. It is very saddening to read about how this incredible genius was hounded to destruction by agents of a nation that owed him so much.
A tale of incredible triumph followed by disturbing tragedy, this is one of the most interesting biographies ever written. Genius is often misunderstood, but it is rarely hounded to destruction. It happened to Alan Turing and this book contains lessons about what can go wrong when people are judged by stereotypes. Given some of the debates that have occurred in the U.S. military recently, it is a lesson that has not yet been completely learned.

Alan Turing makes an absolutely fascinating subject for biography. Not only did Turing significantly contributed to the allied victory in World War II, but one may also consider him to be the father of the modern "thinking machine." Indeed, most introductory computer textbooks still contain references to the "Turing test" for artificial intelligence.

In Part 1, Hodges writes a riveting account of Turing's youth, scientific pursuits, and war-time contributions. He carefully details descriptions of the German "Enigma" coding machine, coding theory, and the code breaking process. Having no significant background in mathematics or ciphering, the reader could probably build his or her own Enigma machine based solely on Hodge's lucid descriptions.

Unfortunately, Part 2 does more to promote Hodges' own agenda than it does to illuminate Turing's life. Hodges makes his agenda clear for Turing's biography following the Postscript in a section labeled "Author's Note from the 1983 Edition." In this, Hodges explains that he discovered Turing for himself while preparing a pamphlet critical of the current medical model of homosexuality as member of London's Gay Liberation Front (535). Part 2 of this biography clearly serves as a platform for that purpose.

While generally dull, Part 2 did offer a few surprises. Though not stated explicitly, Hodges' illustrations demonstrate that the premise behind "Clockwork Orange" finds its roots in the state of England's psychiatric medicine in the 1950's. Imprisonment, castration, hormone therapy, operant conditioning, and psychiatric treatment all played a part in the West's attempts to understand and cope with the nature of homosexuality and the male homosexual's role in society.

Since Turing himself did not crusade for gay rights or take any interest in the rather well known intellectual gay communities of the time, the author's agenda appears significantly out of place. Though persecuted, prosecuted, convicted, and "treated," Turing simply wished to be left alone to pursue his various interests. Hodges should have done the same. Yes, details of Turing's relationships, lifestyle, arrest, trial, and treatment belong in a biography along with their historical context, but Hodges frequently departs with obscure references and musings many readers might not understand and which were simply not part of Turing's own experience.

This biography also left me craving more details regarding the links between Turing's early work and his later work as well as for more details specifically about his later work. I don't think Turing simply changed fields of interest mid career. After all, buried within the mechanics of nature lie the seeds of non-artificial intelligence. What better way to recreate that intelligence artificially than by mastering and modeling the original?

I recommend special treatment for this biography. Rather than bullying your way through every page, simply start reading from the beginning, stop when you lose interest, and don't feel guilty about putting it down incomplete.

One of the difficult challenges for a scientific biographer is to get the science right. When the subject of the biography has contributed to multiple fields, this is even more difficult. Hodges rises to the challenge in this absorbing biography of the great Alan Turing.

Andrew Hodges writes an exquisite and richly detailed account of the life of Alan Turing. At long last, many of the disperate details of Turing's life and work are brought together seemlessly and the reader finishes the book with a more complete understanding of the accomplishments and challenges Turing faced.

The contrast of Turing's life against the back-drop of early 20th century English society is fascinating, though at times quite painful to read. Turing is portrayed not as a freakish social misfit but as a multi-dimensional person with genius-like abilities. Turing was indeed an odd man, certainly an eccentric intellectual, but Hodges successfully portrays him as an anachronism, a man out of place in his time. That he ended up commiting suicide at a relatively young age punctuates the theme of adversity that define Turing's life.

A fascinating book which richly weaves the history of science, mathematics and English society through the 1920's, 30's and 40's.