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The Turing guide. Edited by Jack Copeland, Jonathan Bowen, Mark Sprevak and Robin Wilson. (English) Zbl 1382.68011

Oxford: Oxford University Press (ISBN 978-0-19-874782-6/hbk; 978-0-19-874783-3/pbk). xv, 546 p. (2017).
The book celebrates and covers many aspects of the life and scientific work of Alan Turing. It is written for a general reader and composed of seven parts.
Part I is biographical. The first chapter gives an overview of Turing’s life and work. It is composed of a timeline that is accompanied by photos. It closes with his death. It is not known whether his death was a suicide or actually an accident. Almost everyone had heard about Alan Turing that he bit into a poisoned apple. For love of a good story newspapers filled in the part about the apple being poisoned. Police pathologists, however, thought that Turing had drunk cyanide dissolved in water and only that the apple might have been used to take away some of the taste. In a small laboratory adjoining Turing’s bedroom the police found a jam jar containing cyanide solution. There were no signs of burning around his mouth, which means that he possibly did not drunk the cyanide. Some sort of experiment was going on in the laboratory and Turing might have died from inhaling cyanide gas from the experiment. Either Turing committed suicide or not, and probably we will never know it. Chapter 2 describes Alan Turing as being eccentric, disregarding social conventions. Turing’s mother could not cope with him being gay. Alan was not just regarded as a criminal but as well as a mental case. It seems that, in 1952, gay men had no chance to be considered sane. Because of being gay, he was sentenced to a hormone therapy. He had bad luck, since only a tiny minority was sentenced to the hormone therapy. This kind of hormone therapy caused him to grow breasts. Chapter 3 describes Turing as a genius who is at the same time a friendly human being. He was a genius, but he was a friendly genius. Chapter 4 deals with his unjust punishment. It describes the trial and his punishment. However, it is also indicated that it was not noticed that Turing had a depression following the months of punishment by hormones. He was an optimistic person and even joked about his punishment.
The second part deals with the universal Turing machine. Chapter 5, written by Stephen Wolfram, indicates the relation of Turing machine and cellular automaton. Chapter 6 indicates that Turing invented the universal computing machine. It was not only an abstract model but a description of a possible physical machine. The first digital computer was the Colossus, developed by Tommy Flowers, who worked together with Turing on code breaking. Since this information was a secret for a long time, it was wrongly assumed that the American ENIAC was the first digital computer. The first universal Turing machine in hardware run on Monday 21 June 1948 and was called “Baby”. It was followed by Turing’s Automatic Computing Engine ACE. The story behind this computer is told. The chapter closes with the statement that Turing and von Neumann are the two founding fathers of our computer age. The seventh chapter deals with Hilbert’s Entscheidungsproblem and the Turing machine that was developed in order to prove the impossibility of solving the problem. Alonzo Church was Turing’s PhD supervisor. Around 1936, Turing and Church nearly simultaneously proposed two mathematical ideas of computation. Later, Turing argued that for the development of mathematics, intuition is required that can not be replaced by rules. Chapter 8 deals with the origins of the digital computer and British secret wartime computers, meaning that, before ENIAC, around 1943 a group directed by Max Newman and Tommy Flowers, associated with Alan Turing, built the first digital computer, the Colossus.
The third part deals with code-breaking during the second world war. The chapters of this part are thrilling like a murder mystery. Chapter 9 gives a global overview of the code-breaking efforts that were made at Bletchley Park, and the resulting consequences. Chapter 10 describes the Enigma machine and its operation during the second world war. Chapter 11 describes the importance of the pre-war introduction to Enigma that Turing received from Dilly Knox. Chapter 12 describes the Enigma-cracking bombes, machines that simulated Enigmas to crack the secret code. The first such machine was developed in Poland by Rejewski and his colleagues. It was called bomba. According to Rejewski, he ate an ice-cream dessert, called bombe in French, when the idea for the machine struck him. The machine depended on a weakness unnoticed by the Germans. Later, this weakness was eliminated by the Germans. Turing defined an improved logical design of his bombe, using a more general method. The new bombe machine was called Victory. Chapter 13 introduces the Banburismus, a manual method to reduce the amount of processing the bombes had to do. Following the Enigma, a new cipher machine was introduced by the Germans, nicknamed Tunny. Chapter 14 describes how, by using the first digital computer Colossus, the secret messages were deciphered. Chapter 15 describes the world’s first computer operators. The following chapters deal with remembrances and the secrets around the first digital computer Colossus and the following revelations.
Part IV describes the computers that were built after the war, the Automatic Computing Engine ACE, and the first computer-generated music, 1951 by Christopher Strachey on a Mark I computer that was operational since 1949.
Part V deals with Turing’s works on artificial intelligence and the mind; the child machines are introduced as well as the famous Turing test. Turing was also involved in the birth of computational chess, by introducing the Turochamp. Turochamp was a paper machine, a set of rules indicating a program of how to play chess using paper and pencil. The last chapter deals with Turing and the paranormal and his not well-known argument for extra-sensory perception. It was one of his arguments against the validity of the imitation game, a possible argument against the assumption that machines will be able to think.
Part VI describes Turing’s works on biological growth. Actually, he was one of the first pioneers of artificial life. His theory of morphogenesis is introduced. Part VII describes Turing’s works in mathematics, and the last part deals with the question whether the whole universe is a computer, followed by Turing’s legacy in our times. The last chapter is followed by notes on the contributors and further reading material, followed by chapter notes.
The book is a joy to read, it is thrilling and reveals many new facts about Turing and his work. Everyone interested in computer science should read it.
Table of contents:
Part I Biography
Copeland, Jack; Bowen, Jonathan, Life and work, 3-17
Turing, John Dermot, The man with the terrible trousers, 19-29
Hilton, Peter, Meeting a genius, 31-34
Copeland, Jack, Crime and punishment, 35-40
Part II The universal machine and beyond
Wolfram, Stephen, A century of Turing, 43-47
Copeland, Jack, Turing’s great invention: the universal computing machine, 49-56
Copeland, Jack, Hilbert and his famous problem, 57-65
Randell, Brian, Turing and the origins of digital computers, 67-75
Part III Codebreaker
Copeland, Jack, At Bletchley Park, 79-83
Greenberg, Joel, The Enigma machine, 85-95
Batey, Mavis, Breaking machines with a pencil, 97-107
Copeland, Jack; Valentine, Jean; Caughey, Catherine, Bombes, 109-127
Simpson, Edward, Introducing Banburismus, 129-142
Copeland, Jack, Tunny, Hitler’s biggest fish, 143-159
Ireland, Eleanor, We were the world’s first computer operators, 161-166
Roberts, Jerry, The Testery: breaking Hitler’s most secret code, 167-174
Randell, Brian, Ultra revelations, 175-181
Copeland, Jack, Delilah – encrypting speech, 183-187
Greenish, Simon; Bowen, Jonathan; Copeland, Jack, Turing’s monument, 189-196
Part IV Computers after the war
Copeland, Jack, Baby, 199-212
Campbell-Kelly, Martin, ACE, 213-221
Carpenter, Brian E.; Doran, Robert W., Turing’s Zeitgeist, 223-231
Copeland, Jack; Long, Jason, Computer music, 233-248
Swade, Doron, Turing, Lovelace, and Babbage, 249-262
Part V Artificial intelligence and the mind
Copeland, Jack, Intelligent machinery, 265-275
Sprevak, Mark, Turing’s model of the mind, 277- 285
Proudfoot, Diane, The Turing test – from every angle, 287-300
Proudfoot, Diane, Turing’s concept of intelligence, 301-307
Copeland, Jack; Proudfoot, Diane, Connectionism: computing with neurons, 309-314
Proudfoot, Diane, Child machines, 315-325
Copeland, Jack; Prinz, Dani, Computer chess – the first moments, 327-346
Leavitt, David, Turing and the paranormal, 347-356
Part VI Biological growth
Boden, Margaret A. Pioneer of artificial life, 359-371
Woolley, Thomas E.; Baker, Ruth E.; Maini, Philip K., Turing’s theory of morphogenesis, 373-381
Richards, Bernard, Radiolaria: validating the Turing theory, 383-388
Part VII Mathematics
Whitty, Robin; Wilson, Robin, Introducing Turing’s mathematics, 391-404
Whitty, Robin, Decidability and the Entscheidungsproblem, 405-413
Simpson, Edward, Banburismus revisited: depths and Bayes, 415-426
Downey, Rod, Turing and randomness, 427-435
Grattan-Guinness, Ivor, Turing’s mentor, Max Newman, 437-442
Part VIII Finale
Copeland, Jack; Sprevak, Mark; Shagrir, Oron, Is the whole universe a computer?, 445-462
Bowen, Jonathan; Copeland, Jack, Turing’s legacy, 463-474
The articles of this volume will not be indexed individually.

MSC:

68-06 Proceedings, conferences, collections, etc. pertaining to computer science
68-01 Introductory exposition (textbooks, tutorial papers, etc.) pertaining to computer science
68-03 History of computer science
01A60 History of mathematics in the 20th century
01A70 Biographies, obituaries, personalia, bibliographies
68Q05 Models of computation (Turing machines, etc.) (MSC2010)
94A60 Cryptography
00B15 Collections of articles of miscellaneous specific interest

Biographic References:

Turing, Alan
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