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Alan Turing: Life and Legacy of a Great Thinker
Written by a distinguished cast of contributors, Alan Life and Legacy of a Great Thinker is the definitive collection of essays in commemoration of the 90 th birthday of Alan Turing. This fascinating text covers the rich facets of his life, thoughts, and legacy, but also sheds some light on the future of computing science with a chapter contributed by visionary Ray Kurzweil, winner of the 1999 National Medal of Technology. Further, important contributions come from the philosopher Daniel Dennett, the Turing biographer Andrew Hodges, and from the distinguished logician Martin Davis, who provides a first critical essay on an emerging and controversial field termed "hypercomputation".
570 pages, Hardcover
First published March 29, 2005
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June 30, 2021
When I was asked to take part in the century of Alan Turing's life, I did my homework. And I found my committee mates had not. I heard some trash talk by people who were Turing Award winners poo-pooing Turing's accomplishments.
Christof Teuscher was a PhD student at the EPFL (Lausanne, CH) assigned by his PhD advisor to hold a 90th birthday conference, and the proceedings are this Springer volume. It's a mostly nice book. I won't get into details which have not worked out. But the real gem was learning that Christof moved to the USA and was now a prof at Portland State, so I arranged to meet him, and we had a long chat.
The best thing I learned was that Turing had a number of biographers who did not get along. Don't get them in a room at the same time. This did not prepare me for American problems.
This book deserves to be read (by people doing their home work) the next time some bureaucracy of people design to honor Turing on some quaint numbered birth year.
Before Turing was so honored for his 90th, the EPFL honored von Neumann on the occasion of his 100th birthday (2003?) and most people never took the time to do that. I am writing this note 6 days after Turing's birthday and about 3 weeks of his death. Give the Swiss credit for being ahead of the rest of the world in honoring computing pioneers in this way.
No further sense in trash talking colleagues.
Christof Teuscher was a PhD student at the EPFL (Lausanne, CH) assigned by his PhD advisor to hold a 90th birthday conference, and the proceedings are this Springer volume. It's a mostly nice book. I won't get into details which have not worked out. But the real gem was learning that Christof moved to the USA and was now a prof at Portland State, so I arranged to meet him, and we had a long chat.
The best thing I learned was that Turing had a number of biographers who did not get along. Don't get them in a room at the same time. This did not prepare me for American problems.
This book deserves to be read (by people doing their home work) the next time some bureaucracy of people design to honor Turing on some quaint numbered birth year.
Before Turing was so honored for his 90th, the EPFL honored von Neumann on the occasion of his 100th birthday (2003?) and most people never took the time to do that. I am writing this note 6 days after Turing's birthday and about 3 weeks of his death. Give the Swiss credit for being ahead of the rest of the world in honoring computing pioneers in this way.
No further sense in trash talking colleagues.
Displaying 1 of 1 review