Alan Turing: The Enigma: The Book That Inspired the Film The Imitation Game - Updated Edition

British author Andrew Hodges' biography, "Alan Turing: The Enigma: The Book That Inspired the Film "The Imitation Game" (now that's a mouthful!) is going to appeal to a self-selected readership: history readers and math readers. I doubt anyone else is going to pick up this book and read it for the fun of it. So, I am pitching my review to those historians and mathematicians who will read this book. Andrew Hodges does an excellent job in telling the story of Alan Turing and his "times". Beginning with his early life in England as one of two sons of an India Service official and his wife, his years in "public school", and his time at Kings College, Cambridge, Hodges is a very literate biographer. I can judge this part because I know a fair bit of history. What I cannot say with any certainty is if Hodges gets the math part correctly. I am a math-moron and I could sort of follow his writing. If the reader is good in math, he should have no problem in understanding what Alan Turing accomplished in both the World War 2 and after. As the master code breaker at Bletchley Park, Turing broke German cypher codes from their Enigma machine and was instrumental in helping save the North Atlantic allied shipping from German Uboats. He was also considered one of the fathers of computer science, working after the war until his suicide in 1954. The "death by poisoned apple" in my review's title refers to the method of suicide Turing used. Alan Turing was a homosexual in a time when homosexuality was illegal. He pled guilty of "gross indecency" in a British court in 1952 and rather than serve time in jail, he chose to take "hormonal" treatment to reduce his libido. He found the treatments a life-altering and they, along with losing his government security clearance, may have contributed to his decision to commit suicide. Alan Turing was treated very shabbily in life and in death, many honors were denied him. He and his contributions to computer science and mathematics began to be recognised in 1966 when the "Turing Award" was first awarded by the Association for Computer Machinery. Other honors - both by governmental and collegiate officials - have followed, as well as plays, movies, and biographies of Alan Turing. Andrew Hodges' biography was originally issued in the 1990's. It is now being reissued as an adjunct to the movie, "The Imitation Game", starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing and Kiera Knightly as fellow-code breaker, Joan Clarke. In the previews of the movie, Knightly is shown as the "love interest" of Cumberbatch. In reality, the two were engaged during their work at Bletchley but broke it off short of marriage. I'm curious to see how the movie handles Turing's homosexuality, but that's for another review. As for this biography, it is very, very well done.

I am upgrading my review from *** to **** as I plow through the book. The book is quite good, but quite detailed or technical. Not for a general reader. It is quite good to see the role that Turing played during WW II and how effective he was. He was also very ineffective at times because he was clueless about social clues and unwilling/unable to understand military/war hierarchies. Still a fascinating and detailed, detailed, and more detailed book. My original review: Digression after digression, especially at the beginning of the book. Do I really need to know what letters Turing sent to a friend's mother or how she replied? Quite distracting. Too many digressions about historical figures, too. There is too much of that in the first 15% or so of the book. Once the book gets into Turing's post-graduate work and his work to create computers, that kind detail is very useful -- and relevant. I ordered this book as a Kindle book, because there were too many complaints about the small font in the print copies. It's easy to read on a Kindle app.

This outstanding biography of a unique, outstanding and challenging human being is full of integrity and insight. The author is himself a mathematician / logician, and is able to communicate Turing's work and scientific principles in an accessible yet rigorous way. Plus, the author's broad knowledge of the modern social history of homosexuality brings a good mix of depth, objectivity and empathy to his view of Turing and the essential dilemmas of Turing's life. To label one's subject an "enigma" might seem at first a cop-out. But here it is a forthright statement of the stubborn and mysterious existential inner conflict and puzzle of the man's life, which his genius could not solve. Turing prized truth above all, but had the same subjective longings as all of us, that defeat logic at every turn. One of Turing's achievements was to prove the uncomputability of certain values; this book does the same for a life.

この本、83年の初版本を評者は持っていて、拾い読みしたはずなのだが、いくら探しても見つからなかったので、また新版を買って読み直した。映画の公開に合わせて新版を出したことが露骨にわかる装丁がいただけないが、それは無視して内容の評に入ろう。最初にお断りしておくが、本書はすでに多くの評者が絶賛しており、基本的にそれに対して異論はない。しかし、初版の出版から35年も経つと、さすがに「後知恵」で「これはどうだろうか」という疑問点もいくつか出てくる。そういうところに的を絞った評になるので「批判的」な調子になる箇所はご容赦願いたい。そういった批判は、本書がすでにチューリング伝の優れた「古典」であることを当然認めて評価した上での「ないものねだり」のたぐいであるかもしれない。また、本書の邦訳が2015年に出て、多くの一般読者にも通読が容易になったのも喜ばしいことであり、評者も邦訳のおかげで、原書併用で一週間ほどで再読できたことはありがたい。 本書の特筆すべき功績は、チューリングの人と業績を共感的に描いて蘇らせたことに加え、電子計算機の誕生を巡る誤った歴史的見解を書き換えることに多大な貢献をしたことであろう。万能計算機としてのコンピュータ、その直接の構想の「生みの親」は、チューリングであって、つい20年ほど前までの「通説」だったフォン・ノイマンではない。フォン・ノイマンはチューリングの1936年論文をしばらく無視していたが、計算機制作に関わるようになって以後、チューリングの構想を評価したらしい（167、489）。例えば、フォン・ノイマンがチューリングのためにプリンストンの高等研究所滞在を延長する推薦状を書いた1937年6月には、36年論文に言及さえしてない（167）。「構想」と断ったのは、電子計算機という名前にふさわしい「現物」を作ったのは別の人達の手柄として認めるという別問題があるからである。「The Universal Computer」というタイトルで2000年に本を出版したマーチン・デイヴィス（評者のレビューを参照されたい）の見解に評者は感銘を受けたが、今にして思えば、この本でのチューリングに関する記述は、ほとんどホッジス本からの引用、あるいは要約みたいなものだった（もちろん、ほかに評価すべき見解も含まれているが）。 本書では、チューリングが戦時の「エニグマ」（ドイツ軍の暗号）解読の仕事から始まって電子計算機の設計や制作に関わっていく過程も克明に追跡されているので、米国で開発されたENIAC やEDVACを題材とした「計算機の歴史」を補って訂正する題材がふんだんに含まれている。とくに、前半部分、ドイツ軍のエニグマ暗号を解読する仕事については、かなり詳しい解説と分析、そして図解もあって優れている。ただ一つ不満なのは、暗号解読の有力なヒントとなった”crib”（邦訳ではそのまま「クリブ」とされている）についての丁寧な説明が見当たらないこと。 後半部分では、チューリングが開発に関わったACE（Automatic Computing Engine）も含め、イギリスでの計算機開発の過程がかなり詳しく辿られているが、前半部での丁寧な解説に比べて読みにくいし、図解も皆無で、これでは一般の読者には理解が困難である。例えば、第6章のタイトルにも出てくる「水銀遅延線」、これは米国のエニアックチームのエッカートの創案になるもので、当時のコンピュータの「記憶」部分に不可欠だったものだが、ろくに解説せずにチューリングのアイデアと対比させるものだから、読者はお手上げとなる。せめて一枚でも図を入れていたなら、と惜しまれる。また、本書がもともと1983年の出版だということもあって、コンピュータの歴史に関わる記述としては、欠落する部分（その後の歴史的研究成果）もある。読者はそれを心に留めて読んだほうがいい。 後半部分のハイライトは、チューリングの同性愛事件の顛末と有罪判決後の追跡である。ここは、読む人によって評価が大きく変わるかもしれない。「チューリングに寄り添う姿勢」という肯定的評価をよく見かけるが、読者は「事実経過」をまず押さえて読むべきであろう。間に、あるいは後に、延々と入る著者の「推察」とも「分析」とも判じかねるネチネチとした記述、評者自身は辟易してフォローしかねた。これは「著者自身の思い入れ」を展開した記述ではないのか？評者の意見では、ここはもっと「事実」や手紙などの「文書」や「証言」に基づけ、それらに「語らしめ」て、「思い入れ」をできるだけ排除する記述にしてほしかった。

What we have here is a superb 500 pages biography written by fellow mathematician Andrew Hodges who spent years accessing the available documents and interviewing the surviving witnesses. It is reissued, 30 years later, with a new introduction that gives us a sense of the historical role played by Turing in the ushering in of a new age. As a mathematician, Hodges has what it takes to address the core issue: how did a single genius succeed in breaking the utterly complex Enigma code, thereby contributing to the defeat of the Nazi regime ? Focusing on this core issue implies much more knowledge and insight than focusing, like the corresponding film does, on the biographical elements that don't bring much. Fascinating story by a fascinating author !

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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

The `troubled genius' as a character is something of a cliché but in the case of Alan Turing it's an accurate description. His influence on the world was profound, even if acknowledgement only came years after his death. As the central member of the code-breaking team at Bletchley Park in WWII, he, more than anyone, was responsible for breaking the German `enigma' codes and consequently perhaps saving Britain from defeat in the Battle of the Atlantic. He was also, relatedly, responsible for the development of some of the first computers ever to be built; a professional interest that carried on into the post-war years. However, while those two towering achievements are what posterity remembers him for, they were far from the whole story, as Andrew Hodges makes clear in this fascinating and detailed book. Turing had already made a significant mark on the mathematical world by his mid-twenties, including the development of the concept of what's now known as a `Turing machine', which together with other related work, laid the foundations for electronic computing and programming. Similarly, he was still pushing at the boundaries of maths and science when his untimely death cut short that work. That whole life story is fascinating and Hodges doesn't short-change the reader by concentrating excessively on the famous bits; the book is at least as much about understanding the man as understanding his work. That's a good thing as the detail of both the maths and the code-breaking can be hard to follow at times and while written for the layman, it will certainly help if the reader is familiar with maths through to at least A level. The man himself is not quite the enigma of the book's title. In many ways, he was an archetypal caricature of an academic (his nickname at Bletchley Park was `the prof', which was more than simply a tribute to his skill). Hodges paints a convincing picture of a man who was happy in his own company providing he had something to interest him, sensitive, socially shy, politically naïve (of academic and administrative matters, he had little interest in the workings of government except as it directly affected him), unempathetic but with a child-like innocence and enthusiasm. What's more, he shows what formed that character and how it developed over time. Certainly he was a private man and there's much that we don't know but rather like Turing and the other Enigma, Hodges decodes him skilfully. Turing was also homosexual; a fact that Hodges makes a central strand of the book's narrative. Should it be? I think probably yes: there's no doubt that Turing defined himself in those terms and required others to accept him on them too. It's perhaps right that the reader should be obliged to. A word of warning: this is a long book, running to over 550 pages of small-type (including prefaces), and is at times demanding of the reader. My advice would be to persevere through those sections. There are rarely any technical parts which it's essential to understand though it's an advantage to do so. That said, Hodges is right to have confidence in his readers to at least give that subject matter a go. That kind of heaviness is, on the other hand, frequently lightened by Hodges' language. Time and again he draws analogy with what might be called children's fantasy-horror: Alice in Wonderland is a common reference point, as is the Wizard of Oz (both appropriately in the circumstances). There's a wonderful dry wit running through of which I expect Turing would have approved. The critic's quote on the front cover describes the book as "one of the finest scientific biographies ever written". I'd concur. It's an outstanding study of a man, his work and his times.