Alan Turing: The Enigma

New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983. 1st Paperback Edition. First Printing. Trade paperback. Good/No DJ issued. [12], 587, [1] pages. Wraps. Illustrations. Notes. Index. Cover and spine edges worn, some creasing and scratches to covers, ink name inside front flyleaf. Despite his leading role in breaking the secret German Enigma code during World War II, and his later role in the development of the modern computer, Alan Turing never attained the recognition he deserved in his lifetime. This eccentric genius was persecuted for his homosexuality. Andrew Philip Hodges (born 1949) is a British mathematician, author and emeritus senior research fellow at Wadham College, Oxford. Hodges was Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of London in 1975. Hodges is best known as the author of Alan Turing: The Enigma, the story of the British computer pioneer and codebreaker Alan Turing. The book was critically acclaimed when it was published in 1983, with Donald Michie in New Scientist calling it "marvelous and faithful". In June 2002, it was chosen by Michael Holroyd for inclusion in a list of 50 'essential' books in The Guardian. Alan Turing: The Enigma formed the basis of Hugh Whitemore's 1986 stageplay Breaking the Code, which was adapted by for Television in 1996, with Derek Jacobi as Turing. The book was made into the 2014 film The Imitation Game starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing. The script for The Imitation Game won Graham Moore an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay at the Academy Awards in 2015. He is an emeritus tutorial fellow in mathematics at Wadham College, Oxford. He was appointed Dean of Wadham College from start of the 2011/2012 academic year. Derived from a Kirkus review: The conflicted life of "an ordinary English homosexual atheist mathematician": Alan Turing (1912-1954), of cryptanalysis and computer fame. From his own mathematics and gay-rights background, Hedges reconstructs Turing's discoveries and his dilemma in a kind of dynamic tension--seeing Turing, with considerable subtlety, as an intellectual and sexual individualist. In describing Turing's mathematical coups at Cambridge in the 1930s, and his work on the Enigma machine at Bletchley Park, Hedges deals matter-of-factly with abstract concepts and technical detail. The pages are populated, not just for color, with the likes of von Neumann, Wittgenstein, and Michael Polanyi. But there is also an acute sense of the surrounding, changing world--and, cumulatively, some striking formulations. Turing publicly announces, in 1947, that no line separates the "unconscious automatic machine" and the "higher realms of the intellect." The personal story is feelingful and restrained. Turing's first, great love died at 19; his "gentle advances" were often rebuffed, without ill-feeling; he made no secret of his "tendencies," except to his family; he was once engaged (to a woman undaunted by those tendencies); by the 1950s, he was part of England's "network of flashing eyes." And in 1952, rashly reporting a burglary involving a young lover, he was charged with "gross indecency"; pleaded guilty--evincing no guilt; and accepted organo-hormone treatment in lieu of prison. In 1954, seemingly himself, he committed suicide. Sophisticated and nuanced.