There is a little part of me that is offended, but there is another larger part of me that is not surprised. It seems that the movie took a lot of liberties and while there were not many huge outright lies, there were plenty of distortions, simplifications and exaggerations. So it was time to tackle this volume and I chose to tackle it by audiobook.įirstly I want to cover the book and it's difference to the movie, because looking at the words on the print cover, 'The Book That Inspired the Film 'The Imitation Game'', it leads you to a sense that a biopic from a biography should be fairly accurate. Anyway, along comes the film starring Sherlock himself and I found myself highly entertained by the story and wanting to know more. By the way I find that these instances only increase with the more you act upon them. I found it after one of those tipping points where you finally hit the nth reference to a person or idea and you find your ignorance about it embarrassing. This book has been on my radar for years now. He is a great proponent of going back to first principles when approaching problems also. He is determined to tackle large questions and finds that his understanding of mathematics and logic can be applied to aspects of the universe around him, especially in areas that people would deem too messy and without any logic. He is a quiet and shy man, but one who mainly gets along with his colleagues. His suicide in 1954 remains one of the many enigmas in an astonishing life story. 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. 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.ĭrawn in to 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 1945 he was a pioneer of electronic computer design.

Already in the 1930s he had defined the concept of the universal machine, which underpins the computer revolution. But Turing's vision went far beyond the desperate wartime struggle.

His breaking of the German U-boat Enigma cipher in World War II ensured Allied-American control of the Atlantic. Alan Turing (1912-54) was a British mathematician who made history.

Alan Turing by Andrew Hodges