The Turing Guide

Jack Copeland, Jonathan Bowen, Mark Sprevak, Robin Wilson

Oxford University Press, Feb 16, 2017 - Science - 400 pages

Alan Turing has long proved a subject of fascination, but following the centenary of his birth in 2012, the code-breaker, computer pioneer, mathematician (and much more) has become even more celebrated with much media coverage, and several meetings, conferences and books raising public awareness of Turing's life and work. This volume will bring together contributions from some of the leading experts on Alan Turing to create a comprehensive guide to Turing that will serve as a useful resource for researchers in the area as well as the increasingly interested general reader. The book will cover aspects of Turing's life and the wide range of his intellectual activities, including mathematics, code-breaking, computer science, logic, artificial intelligence and mathematical biology, as well as his subsequent influence.

Contents

• PART II The universal machine and beyond: 41
• PART III Codebreaker: 77
• PART IV Computers after the war: 197
• PART V Artificial intelligence and the mind: 263
• PART VI Biological growth: 357
• PART VII Mathematics: 389
• PART VIII Finale: 443
• Notes on the contributors: 475
• Further reading notes and references: 481
• Chapter notes: 484
• Index: 533

About the author

Jack Copeland FRS NZ is Distinguished Professor in Arts at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, where he is Director of the Turing Archive for the History of Computing. He has been script advisor and scientific consultant for a number of recent documentaries about Turing. Jack is Co-Director of the Turing Centre at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, and also Honorary Research Professor in the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry at the University of Queensland, Australia. In 2012 he was Royden B. Davis Visiting Chair of Interdisciplinary Studies in the Department of Psychology at Georgetown University, Washington DC, and in 2015-16 was a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Israel. A Londoner by birth, he earned a D.Phil. in mathematical logic from the University of Oxford, where he was taught by Turing's great friend Robin Gandy. Robin Wilson is an Emeritus Professor of Pure Mathematics at the Open University, UK, and of Geometry at Gresham College, London. After graduating from Oxford, he received his Ph.D. degree in number theory from the University of Pennsylvania. He has written and co-edited many books on graph theory and the history of mathematics, including Four Colors Suffice and Combinatorics: Ancient & Modern. His historical research interests include British mathematics and the history of graph theory and combinatorics, and he has been President of the British Society for the History of Mathematics. An enthusiastic popularizer of mathematics, he won two awards for expository writing from the Mathematical Association of America. Mark Sprevak is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. His primary research interests are in philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and metaphysics, with particular focus on the cognitive sciences. He has published articles in, among other places, The Journal of Philosophy, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Synthese, Philosophy, Psychiatry & Psychology, and Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. His book The Computational Mind is forthcoming from Routledge. Jonathan P. Bowen FBCS FRSA is Emeritus Professor of Computing at London South Bank University, where he established and headed the Centre for Applied Formal Methods in 2000. During 2013-15 he was Professor of Computer Science at Birmingham City University. Previously he was a lecturer at the University of Reading, a senior researcher at the Oxford University Computing Laboratory's Programming Research Group, and a research assistant at Imperial College, London. Since 1977 he has been involved with the field of computing in both academia and industry. His books include: Formal Specification and Documentation using Z; High-Integrity System Specification and Design; Formal Methods: State of the Art and New Directions; and Electronic Visualisation in Arts and Culture.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Turing Guide
• Authors: Jack Copeland, Jonathan Bowen, Mark Sprevak, Robin Wilson
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2017
• ISBN: 0191065005, 9780191065002
• Length: 400 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Science & Technology; Computers / Computer Science; Mathematics / General; Mathematics / History & Philosophy; Science / General; Science / History; Science / Philosophy & Social Aspects; Technology & Engineering / History