587 pp. Inspiration for the film The Imitation Game starring Benedict Cumberbatch. The extraordinary story of the brilliant scientist whose "Enigma" device broke Germany's most secret WWII code, who pioneered the modern computer age and who finally fell victim to the Cold-War world of military secrets and sexual scandal. Alan Turing (1912-54) was a British mathematician who made history. His breaking of the German U-boat Enigma cipher in World War II ensured Allied-American control of the Atlantic. But Turing's vision went far beyond the desperate wartime struggle. Already in the 1930s he had defined the concept of the universal machine, which underpins the computer revolution. In 1945 he was a pioneer of electronic computer design. But Turing's true goal was the scientific understanding of the mind, brought out in the drama and wit of the famous "Turing test" for machine intelligence and in his prophecy for the twenty-first century.
