The book that inspired the film 'The Imitation Game'. Alan Turing was the
mathematician whose cipher-cracking transformed the Second World War. Taken on
by British Intelligence in 1938, as a shy young Cambridge don, he combined
brilliant logic with a flair for engineering. In 1940 his machines were breaking
the Enigma-enciphered messages of Nazi Germany?s air force. He then headed the
penetration of the super-secure U-boat communications. But his vision went far
beyond this achievement. Before the war he had invented the concept of the
universal machine, and 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 and he was subjected to humiliating treatment. In 1954,
aged 41, Alan Turing took his own life.