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Alan Turing: The Enigma: The Book That Inspired the Film The Imitation Game - Updated Edition Paperback – Illustrated, November 10, 2014

by Andrew Hodges (Author, Preface), Douglas Hofstadter (Foreword)

4.0 2,882 ratings

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A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

The official book behind the Academy Award-winning film The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley

It is only a slight exaggeration to say that the British mathematician Alan Turing (1912–1954) saved the Allies from the Nazis, invented the computer and artificial intelligence, and anticipated gay liberation by decades—all before his suicide at age forty-one. This New York Times bestselling biography of the founder of computer science, 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.

Capturing both the inner and outer drama of Turing’s life, Andrew Hodges tells how Turing’s revolutionary idea of 1936—the concept of a universal machine—laid the foundation for the modern computer and how Turing brought the idea to practical realization in 1945 with his electronic design. The book also tells how this work was directly related to Turing’s leading role in breaking the German Enigma ciphers during World War II, a scientific triumph that was critical to Allied victory in the Atlantic. At the same time, this is the tragic account of a man who, despite his wartime service, was eventually arrested, stripped of his security clearance, and forced to undergo a humiliating treatment program—all for trying to live honestly in a society that defined homosexuality as a crime.

The inspiration for a major motion picture starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley, Alan Turing: The Enigma is a gripping story of mathematics, computers, cryptography, and homosexual persecution.

Print length

768 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Princeton University Press
Publication date

November 10, 2014
Dimensions

5 x 2 x 8 inches
ISBN-10

9780691164724
ISBN-13

978-0691164724
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"A New York Times Bestseller 2014, 2015"

"The Imitation Game, Winner of the 2015 Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay"

"Winner of the 2015 (27th) USC Libraries Scripter Award, University of Southern California Libraries"

"One of The Guardian’s Best Popular Physical Science Books of 2014, chosen by GrrlScientist"

"Scrupulous and enthralling."---A. O. Scott, New York Times

"One of the finest scientific biographies ever written."---Jim Holt, The New Yorker

"A powerful story that combines professional success and personal tragedy."---Nancy Szokan, Washington Post

"The indispensable guide to Turing's life and work and one of the finest biographies of a scientific genius ever written."---Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times

"Turing's rehabilitation from over a quarter-century's embarrassed silence was largely the result of Andrew Hodges's superb biography. . . . Hodges examined available primary sources and interviewed surviving witnesses to elucidate Turing's multiple dimensions. A mathematician, Hodges ably explained Turing's intellectual accomplishments with insight, and situated them within their wider historical contexts. He also empathetically explored the centrality of Turing's sexual identity to his thought and life in a persuasive rather than reductive way."---Michael Saler, Times Literary Supplement

"On the face of it, a richly detailed 500-page biography of a mathematical genius and analysis of his ideas, might seem a daunting proposition. But fellow mathematician and author Hodges has acutely clear and often extremely moving insight into the humanity behind the leaping genius that helped to crack the Germans' Enigma codes during World War II and bring about the dawn of the computer age. . . . This melancholy story is transfigured into something else: an exploration of the relationship between machines and the soul and a full-throated celebration of Turing's brilliance, unselfconscious quirkiness and bravery in a hostile age."---Sinclair McKay, Wall Street Journal

"A first-class contribution to history and an exemplary work of biography."---I. J. Good, Nature

"An almost perfect match of biographer and subject. . . . [A] great book."---Ray Monk, Guardian

"An exhilarating, compassionate and detailed biography of a complicated man."---Jane Ciabattari, BBC

"A superb biography. . . . Written by a mathematician, it describes in plain language Turing's work on the foundations of computer science and how he broke the Germans' Enigma code in the Second World War. The subtle depiction of class rivalries, personal relationships, and Turing's tragic end are worthy of a novel. But this was a real person. Hodges describes the man, and the science that fascinated him—which once saved, and still influences, our lives."---Margaret Boden, New Scientist

"Andrew Hodges's magisterial Alan Turing: The Enigma . . . is still the definitive text."---Joshua Cohen, Harper's

"Andrew Hodges's biography is a meticulously researched and written account detailing every aspect of Turing's life. . . . This account of Turing's life is a definitive scholarly work, rich in primary source documentation and small-grained historical detail." ― Mathematics Teacher

"[A] really excellent biography. . . . The great thing about this book is that the author is a mathematician and can explain the details of Turing's work—as a scientist, mathematician, and a code breaker—in a way that is easy to understand. He is also wonderful at the emotional nuance of Alan's life, who was a somewhat odd--a student was assigned to him in school to help him maintain a semblance of tidiness in his appearance, rooms and school work and at Bletchley Park he was known for chaining his tea mug to a pipe--but he was also charming and intelligent and Hodges brings all the aspects of his personality and life into sharp focus." ― Off the Shelf

"This book is an incredibly detailed and meticulously researched biography of Alan Turing. Reading it is a melancholy experience, since you know from the outset that the ending is a tragic one and that knowledge overshadows you throughout. While the author divides the text into two parts, it actually reads like a play in four acts. . . . This book is Turing's memorial, and one that does justice to the subject."---Katherine Safford-Ramus, MAA Reviews

"If [The Imitation Game] does nothing else but send you, as it did me, to Alan Hodges's Alan Turing: The Enigma . . . it more than justifies its existence. A great read, Hodges's intellectual biography depicts Turing as a brilliant mathematician; a crucial pioneering figure in the theorization and engineering of digital computing; and the biggest brain in Bletchley Park's Hut #8."---Amy Taubin, Artforum

"It is indeed the ultimate biography of Alan Turing. It will bring you as close as possible to his enigmatic personality."---Adhemar Bultheel, European Mathematical Society

"A book whose time has finally come. I found it to be a page-turner in spite of the occasionally esoteric explanations of mathematical theories that reminded of why Brooklyn Technical High School was not the wisest choice for me."---Terrance, Paris Readers Circle

"Thanks to the movie The Imitation Game, Alan Turing has emerged from history's shadows, where his memory had languished for decades. For anyone whose interest in the pioneering computer scientist, mathematician, and logician was piqued by the film, the book that served as the film's source material, Andrew Hodges's exhaustive biography Alan Turing: The Enigma, has the answers."---Frank Caso, Simply Charly

Review

"One of the finest scientific biographies I've ever read: authoritative, superbly researched, deeply sympathetic, and beautifully told."—Sylvia Nasar, author of A Beautiful Mind

"A captivating, compassionate portrait of a first-rate scientist who gave so much to a world that in the end cruelly rejected him. Perceptive and absorbing, Andrew Hodges's book is scientific biography at its best."—Paul Hoffman, author of The Man Who Loved Only Numbers

"A remarkable and admirable biography."—Simon Singh, author of The Code Book and Fermat's Enigma

"A first-rate presentation of the life of a first-rate scientific mind. . . . It is hard to imagine a more thoughtful and compassionate portrait of a human being."—from the foreword by Douglas Hofstadter

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 069116472X
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Princeton University Press; Revised edition (November 10, 2014)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 768 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780691164724
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0691164724
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.3 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5 x 2 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #49,714 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #11 in Computing Industry History
- #25 in Mathematics History
- #133 in Scientist Biographies

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4.0 2,882 ratings

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Andrew Hodges

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Andrew Hodges (born 1949) is a British mathematician and author.

Hodges was born in London. Since the early 1970s, Hodges has worked on twistor theory, which is the approach to the problems of fundamental physics pioneered by Roger Penrose. He was also involved in gay liberation movement these times.

Hodges is best known as the author of Alan Turing: The Enigma, the story of the British computer pioneer and codebreaker Alan Turing. Critically acclaimed at the time — Donald Michie in New Scientist called it ""marvellous and faithful"" — the book was chosen by Michael Holroyd as part of a list of 50 'essential' books (that were currently available in print) in The Guardian, 1 June 2002.

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 later made into the 2014 film The Imitation Game directed by Morten Tyldum, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing. The script for The Imitation Game won Graham Moore an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 87th Academy Awards in 2015.

Hodges is also the author of works that popularize science and mathematics.

He is a Tutorial Fellow in mathematics at Wadham College, Oxford University. Having taught at Wadham since 1986, Hodges was elected a Fellow in 2007, and was appointed Dean from start of the 2011/2012 academic year.

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

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LA in Dallas

Mathematician and code-breaker

Reviewed in the United States on December 11, 2023

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Let me begin with the obvious: Alan Turing was a mathematician. I don't just mean that he was a guy whose day job was doing math. There is an understandable modern resistance to the practice of defining people by their jobs. Although, oddly, no one seems to have a problem with people who say, "I am an artist." In the same way, the statement "Turing was a mathematician" must be permitted. He was a mathematician, not just a guy who did math. If Turing had been born in fifth century Britain, he would have been a mathematician. Obviously, he wouldn't have established the theoretical basis of computer science or broken Nazi codes. He would have made discoveries, and those discoveries almost certainly would now be lost. Fortunately he met his time.

It follows that there's gonna be a lot of math in a good biography of Turing. I recently read Bruce Springsteen's autobiography Born to Run (it's good!), and there are pages upon pages about music. This is appropriate. Springsteen is a musician, in the same way that Turing is a mathematician, and it would be wrong for his biography to downplay music.

Andrew Hodges' Alan Turing: The Enigma doesn't avoid this truth. There's a lot of math in it. The difference between math and music is that most of us know a lot about music (or think we do), while Americans by and large seem to take pride in not understanding math. If math is hard for you, The Enigma will be hard for you. If you don't understand math, you will never understand Turing's genius, and that is sad. You may feel that this is unfair. It IS unfair ☹. Reality is often like that. Fortunately, though, there is something for you, the movie The Imitation Game based on this book. It's not as good as the book, but it's pretty good, still.

The Enigma is one of the best biographies I have ever read. In fact, thinking of it right now, I can't think of a better one. Obviously one of the reasons it's good is its subject. Turing was an extraordinarily creative thinker who had little patience for the conventional -- thus he struggled professionally. He was also a gay man at a time and place when that was literally illegal. He was fortunate, however, in that he found a place: Cambridge University and then Bletchley Park. Although he didn't carry a gun, he fought the German war machine as effectively as anyone. It's an exciting story, but ultimately a tragedy.

Hodges is sympathetic to Turing and his pursuits, without being blind to his faults. The Enigma is deeply researched, and Hodges knows his stuff. If you're a mathematician and want to understand Turing, you can't do better.

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peterg

Hodges provides a very good discussion of this question and Turing's resolution

Reviewed in the United States on February 22, 2015

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The book begins with the obligatory summary of his parents' lives and Turing's rather uneventful early years. It gets interesting when Turing gets to Cambridge, where he faces real intellectual challenges and starts on what was to be his major scientific accomplishment: the question known as “computability”. Hodges provides a very good discussion of this question and Turing's resolution, and how it lead to the concept of the Turing machine, a model that can be said to be implemented in all modern computers, but in no way serves as an ancestor of any of them.

The real fascination of Turing's career (for most of the reading public) is his work on calculating machines to aid in the decrypting messages from the German Enigma machine used to encode their naval communications, most particularly with their submarines. The particular contribution of Turing was the design of the electro- mechanical device called the “bombe” (an anglicization of the polish “bomba”, for a prior device for a similar purpose developed in Poland based on even earlier work in France in the late 1930's, at a time when both these countries seemed more sensitive to the need for decoding German military communications than was England). Turing's bombe was an electro-mechanical device that efficiently replicated the action of several Enigma machines wired together. As used by the Germans, the rotors of the Enigma (which provided the random encryption) were reset each day. The challenge for the British was to twiddle the rotors in the array of bombe's until they got some rational looking text from an attempted decryption of the intercepted German messages. Most of the enormous number of possible rotor settings were generally reduced by screening out those that did not produce any of a frequently used set of terms (called “cribs”) anywhere in the message. Once a promising setting was determined, all the rest of the messages for that day could be decoded. The book provides extensive details of bombe operations and how they were applied.

The book describes the roles of many individuals as the bombes were improved and their numbers expanded to operate at several sites in England (as a precaution against arial bombardment of a single site). While the book gives Turing the most important role in this process, it is nowhere near the “but for” importance implied in the movie “The Imitation Game”, which is loosely based on this book. The book describes several of Turing's unique contributions including his famous letter to Churchill, dated October 21, 1941, as an eminent scientist pleading for more funds to accelerate the Bletchley Park effort, Churchill's positive response may have made a significant difference in anti-submarine warfare at that time. Another unique contribution was Turing's visit to the United States from November 1942- March 1943, with his offering very perceptive guidance on the US bombe construction program (which eventually surpassed the British in numbers and speed of computation).

Nearly half of the last 100 pages of the book is devoted to Turing's affair with Arnold Murray and his subsequent prosecution for it. The author reveals that he (Hodges) is also a homosexual, as if to prepare the reader for some insight on the matter. I would have appreciated some explanation of the fact that, although Turing had a number of sexual relations with men of his own age, class and intellectual attainments (described fleetingly in the prior narrative), he suddenly chose a working class man, less than half his age, with only modest intellectual yearnings and no accomplishments. [My own interpretation is that he wanted, consciously or subconsciously, to be a martyr and brought the whole thing on himself by going to the police to report a minor burglary connected to the affair.] As for the larger social significance of the situation, Hodges tries to build a case that Turing was especially prosecuted because it was perceived that his uncontrollability made him a serious security threat. This argument is not very convincing since Turing had done no security work for at least 5 years previous and had no prospect of doing any in the future. Furthermore, there is no evidence of any involvement by high government officials, only a few local police and prosecutors.

I would advise skipping the rather lengthy introduction (31 pages) until after you've read the book; it doesn't introduce the subject, but does give some interesting tidbits of discoveries and re-interpretations since Turing's death. This subject is also treated in the Author's note at the end of the book.

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Hector Mendoza

Muy bien en general

Reviewed in Mexico on July 19, 2022

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Aunque solo llevo unas cuantas paginas como tal, el libro viene en muy buenas condiciones, parece nuevo, pero creo que no lo es. Traía una esquina de hoja doblada y el borde del mismo está como aplastado y maltratado, no viene con plástico para protegerlo o algo. En general buenas condiciones respecto a su estado físico.

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Peter OW

A totally involving read

Reviewed in Canada on July 6, 2021

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The 'historical' aspects of Turing's life were interesting and set him in a correct British class context. His life at school and Cambridge University illuminated him. The descriptions of his work at Bletchley revealed a little of the math and new science being developed and used to break Enigma. The post-war section was sad and depressing. Turing's homosexuality was (sometimes) a strength in his early life, but a social impediment after the war. The final analysis of Turing in an almost sociological context (gay, Manchester, trial, loss of security etc.) was a necessary part of the book -- but would have been easy to disregard. But I travailed and put Alan Turing in the England I grew up in. The additional material in this edition was revealing.

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Aman

The book is great on the whole life of Mr. Alan Turing.

Reviewed in India on December 12, 2021

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Although the book is great. But the product which I received seems to be an used one with torn edges.

gianluca

ottimo libro

Reviewed in Italy on September 28, 2021

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ottimo libro scorrevole spedizione e prodotto eccellente nonostante l'ordine fatto su warehouse

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Pieter Klaassen

Looked like an often read secons hand book

Reviewed in the Netherlands on April 13, 2021

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The book looked dirty and a bit scuffed up. Not like a new book, more like an often read second hand book. The content of the book however is excelent, so I encourage you to go read this book. Just don't buy it here

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