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Alan Turing: The Enigma Summary

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Alan Turing: The Enigma is a scientific biography of one of the most brilliant minds in history. Andrew Hodges provides a detailed account of Alan’s life and shows his various contributions to history, mathematics, science etc. It also shows how instead of giving him an exceptional status he was forced to live a horrid life that ultimately led him to commit suicide. Andrew Hodges is a British mathematician, which helped him give a clear insight in Alan Turing’s life and his theories.

The book opens up by describing Alan’s life in Britain and his family background. Alan was a very shy boy who had problem socializing with people as he was always too engrossed in work and had a completely different perspective about everything. He was left shattered after the death of his friend Christopher Marcom who is also believed to be Alan’s first love. He went on to study at …show more content…

The leader of the armies might have thought of themselves as the leaders when in reality it was Alan Turing and his team who were applying their permutations and combinations to calculate which places had to be attacked, which attacks to ignore and which places had to be defended. This was all hidden away from public and it is only because both the army and the cryptologists worked together that they were able to win the war.

To understand all the theories and ideas proposed by Turing a layman might have to read the concepts explained by Hodges twice or even thrice. It is very difficult to for a person who doesn’t have a deep knowledge in the field of mathematics to comprehend the theories mentioned in the book. It seems as if while writing this book Andrew Hodges has presumed that the reader has a good knowledge about the concepts of mathematics, science and computer. He introduces a few topics properly but goes on and on about them, which also make this book a slow,

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