Alan Turing: His Work and Impact

Barry Cooper is Professor of Mathematical Logic at the University of Leeds. A graduate of the University of Oxford, his research follows that of Alan Turing in its focus on the nature of mental and physical computation. Author and editor of numerous books, including Computability Theory, New Computational Paradigms, and Computability in Context, he is a leading advocate of multidisciplinary research at the interface between what is known to be computable, and theoretical and practical incomputability. For more information, http://www1.maths.leeds.ac.uk/. Jan van Leeuwen is professor at the Department of Information and Computing Sciences at Utrecht University. He received a Ph.D. in mathematics in 1972 from the same institution. After having held several positions in computer science in the US, he returned to Utrecht as a faculty member in 1977. He was head of department from 1977 to 1983 and from 1991 to 1994, and served as dean from 1994 to 2009. His research interests extend to many branches of the theory and philosophy of computer science. He is a member of the Academia Europae, is the first recipient of a Distinguished Lorentz Fellowship Prize in the Netherlands, and holds an honorary doctorate from RWTH Aachen University. For more information, http://www.cs.uu.nl/staff/jan.html.

".much of what's presented is for specialists.But there's still plenty even for a non-mathematician like me, some of it surprisingly moving.no matter how well you know the life and work of Turing, you'll learn something from this book."--OECD Insights blog, August 26, 2013 "This accessible book is an essential read for those interested in Turing's work and provides a more contemporary perspective than anything else that is available."--CyberTalk, September 2013 "This volume contains a mix of writings - some excerpts by Turing, but mostly writings about him and his work by those who understand his genius and his legacy. The writings include first person narratives of what he was like and what it was like to work with him, personal accounts of career-changing encounters with his thinking, and commentary on particular aspects of his work."--Reference and Research Book News, August 2013 "The new testament of computer science has come, 101 years after the birth of founding prophet Alan Turing.How big is the incomputable universe? Can digital machines think? Do daisies emerge from pure chemistry? If your soul craves answers to such questions, this is your new bible."--Nature, June 19, 2013 "Alan Turing: His Work and Impact makes Turing's most important papers readily accessible and affordable. With the four volumes of the previously published "Collected Works" now scarce and very expensive, this volume fills a pressing need in Turing scholarship. Moreover, the commentaries associated with Turing's papers in this volume offer new and compelling insights into the continuing importance and relevance of Turing's work, contextualizing it in contemporary contexts and providing richly elaborated explanations of how and why Turing's work remains seminal for a wide variety of fields, including computational science, cognitive science, artificial intelligence and more." -- N. Katherine Hayles, Professor of Literature, Duke University