FOREWORD BY ANDREW HODGES
Author of the bestseller Alan Turing, the Enigma
This book celebrates Alan Turing’s place in mathematics, science, technology, and philosophy,
and includes chapters by a number of Turing’s contemporaries. A glance at its pages will show
the diversity of the contributions. Some are fastidious scholarship, bringing to life details of
smudged typescripts and incomplete manuscripts from over 60 years ago. Some convey mod-
ern scientific developments. Some explore personal memories, or philosophical speculations.
But they share a special concern to shed new light on hidden history.
Turing’s centenary year reflected a general public sense that the issues of Alan Turing’s life
and work are as relevant as ever in the twenty-first century. One reason is obvious: the univer-
sality of the computer has invaded everyday consciousness. It has changed the relationship
between the individual and the social world. The computer has made possible impassioned
public campaigns for Turing’s official recognition, demanding some remedy for his identity
as a criminalized gay man. At the same time, the significance of the modern state’s computer-
based collection and analysis of information, of which he was the scientific founder, has made
a new impact on the world political arena. Turing himself knew that the computer would
involve everything: it was prefigured in his futuristic discussion of the meaning of mechanical
intelligence, where his all-embracing discourse touched provocatively on topics from sex to
cryptography.
Andrew Hodges
Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford