A new edition to celebrate Alan Turing`s centenary,
Includes:: a new foreword by the author & a preface by Douglas Hofstadter. Alan Turing was the extraordinary Cambridge mathematician who masterminded the cracking of the German Enigma ciphers & transformed the Second World War. But his vision went far beyond this crucial achievement. Before the war he had formulated the concept of the universal machine, & in 1945 he turned this into the first design for a digital computer. Turing`s far-sighted plans for the digital era forged ahead into a vision for Artificial Intelligence. However, in 1952 his homosexuality rendered him a criminal & he was subjected to humiliating treatment. In 1954, aged 41, Alan Turing committed suicide & one of Britain`s greatest scientific minds was lost.