"ALAN TURING: The Enigma is 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 than this one."
– from the Introduction by Douglas Hofstadter

"Perceptive and absorbing, Andrew Hodges’s book is scientific biography at its best."
– Paul Hoffman, author of The Man Who Loved Only Numbers

Alan Turing (1912-1954) 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.

Drawn into the cockpit of world events and the forefront of technological innovation. Alan Turing was also an innocent and unpretentious gay man trying to live in a society that criminalized him. In 1952, he revealed his homosexuality and was forced to participate in a humiliating treatment program, and was ever after regarded as a security risk. His suicide in 1954 remains one of the many enigmas in an astonishing life story.

Both a compelling narrative and a work of scholarship, ALAN TURING: The Enigma is the definitive biography of one of the greatest minds of the modern world.

Writing the life of Alan Turing combined Andrew Hodges’s many interests: in mathematics (his research work is with Roger Penrose, applying twistor theory to fundamental physics), in modern history, and in the gay liberation movement. He teaches mathematics at Wadham College, Oxford University, and lives in cyberspace at http://www.synth.co.uk/

For an expanded version of this book's Preface, and for additional information on Alan Turing, go to www.turing.org.uk/book/update