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Biography & Autobiography. Nonfiction. HTML: A "skillful, literate" (New York Times Book Review) biography of the persecuted genius who helped create the modern computer To solve one of the great mathematical problems of his day, Alan Turing proposed an imaginary computer. Then, attempting to break a Nazi code during World War II, he successfully designed and built one, thus ensuring the Allied victory. Turing became a champion of artificial intelligence, but his work was cut short. As an openly gay man at a time when homosexuality was illegal in England, he was convicted and forced to undergo a humiliating "treatment" that may have led to his suicide. With a novelist's sensitivity, David Leavitt portrays Turing in all his humanity�his eccentricities, his brilliance, his fatal candor�and elegantly explains his work and its implications..… (more)
User reviews
In other words, this is yet another book with lots of interesting potential that turned out to be disappointing. I've been reading too many of those lately. It's made me grumpy, and inclined to rate this one lower than I otherwise might.
David Leavitt is a gay writer who writes both fiction and nonfiction. He has a narrative style which is easy to read. That is a definite asset in this book, since he addresses some mathematical concepts which might not be easy for everyone to understand.
Leavitt gives a great deal of attention to Turing's sexuality, and argues for two points in particular. One is not very controversial. He points out that other mathematicians who disagreed with Turing's theoretical views used an incorrect syllogism to dismiss those views: "Turing thinks that machines can think. Turing sleeps with men. Therefore, machines cannot think."
The other point Leavitt brings up is more controversial. He makes the case that Turing's homosexuality made him a better mathematical thinker. Basically, the argument is that Turing knew from his own experience that being gay was perfectly natural and that the majority of society was wrong on the issue; that made him a more original thinker in general, which led to his revolutionary ideas that laid the foundation for the invention of the computer. This idea was very intriguing to me, since I frequently hear a similar idea brought up in connection to gay artists and writers, but rarely in connection to gay mathematicians or scientists.
Turing's stroke of genius was to recast the issue - mathematicians call it the decision problem - in mechanical terms. A theorem and the instructions for proving it, he realized, could be thought of as input for a machine. If there was a solution, Turing's imaginary device would eventually come to a stop and print the answer. Otherwise it would grind away forever. Although it was not his primary intention, he had discovered, in passing, the idea of the programmable computer.
Two major complaints:
* The author kept making connections between Turing's homosexuality and his professional work. While those connections seem reasonable
* At the end of the book -- literally the last several pages -- the author drops the suggestion that the British government had Turing killed. Though it apparently gave the book its title, the speculation is again completely unsupported and speculative, and weakened the book.
I liked this biography especially because the author sat down and worked out some of the math, and spent time explaining decoding. But really, the important part was that they didn't gloss over the fact
Even for someone that likes to read nonfiction anyway, I was REALLY into this book. Only reason it took so long to get to it was school (since I bought this in the summer).
Great biography. Really.