Alan Turing: The Enigma

Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges  736 pp.

This biography of Alan Turing, the British scientist and mathematician who helped crack the Nazi enigma codes, was the basis for the film "The Imitation Game" starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Turing. Alan Turing also developed what we now know as computer science and with the invention of the "Turing Machine", a mathematical computation machine began the "computer age". During World War II Turing and a host of others working in the once secret Bletchley Park where the British set up their code breaking efforts. The work of Turing and others there shortened the duration of the war and very possibly made the Allied defeat of Germany possible. During wartime Turing's homosexuality was ignored by the authorities who needed his expertise. With the advent of the cold war government attitudes changed and homosexuality was looked upon as a security risk. Turing was arrested in 1952 and agreed to undergo chemical castration in lieu of prison time. At that time he also lost his government security clearance. Turing committed suicide in 1954. Hodges book contains very detailed descriptions of Turing's work from childhood on and is interesting, if occasionally heavy on the mathematics. Unfortunately, Hodges goes on to posthumously psychoanalyze Turing in the last chapters, much of which is speculation on the author's part. Those chapters could have been deleted and the book would have been much better.

Fall of Man in Wilmslow

Fall of Man in Wilmslow: the Death & Life of Alan Turing by David Lagercrantz  353 pp.

This fictional account of the 1953 death by suicide of mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing reveals much about the attitudes of that time period. Detective Constable Leonard Corell  suspects the death may have been a murder because of all the secrecy surrounding Turing's work during World War II. In the 1950s England was consumed with the idea of homosexuals in the intelligence divisions for fear that they would succumb to blackmail or were just too unstable to be trusted with top secret information. This fear was exacerbated by two homosexual men who were actually Soviet spies which made Turing guilty by association.  At that time the work at Bletchley Park on the German Enigma Machine was still classified and even the police weren't let in on its secrets. When Corell is ordered to abandon his investigation he continues while off-duty and eventually finds himself in danger for asking too many questions and soliciting information from the "wrong" people. The story is intriguing and the viewpoint on the 1950s Red Scare is well-handled.