I believe I first read about Alan Turing in one of those jumbo-sized children’s books that are available on all sorts of topics and are often given as birthday gifts to people like me, who love to read. The topic of this book was espionage, and my young mind was thrilled to be reading about Turing’s role as a code breaker at Bletchley Park during World War II. I rediscovered Turing in high school and was fascinated to learn more about his life, including his tragic suicide after being convicted of the “crime” of homosexuality by the British government and chemically castrated as punishment.
It was around this time that I first heard of Andrew Hodges’ Alan Turing: The Enigma, widely regarded as the definitive Turing biography. Unfortunately, the book was not currently in print in the U.S., and it was impossible for me to get my hands on a copy in good condition. All of that changed in 2012, which was designated Alan Turing Year in the UK as a celebration of the mathematician’s life and successes. Not only was The Enigma republished in the U.S., but Turing himself was pardoned by the Queen in 2013 and The Imitation Game, a biopic of Turing starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley, premiered in 2014 (see the trailer here).
You may be wondering, if I bought Alan Turing: The Enigma in 2012, why did it take me five years to finally read it? The main reason is that I was applying to colleges that same year, and wanted both to focus on my academic coursework, and to stick to books in my free time that required less “reading comprehension.” By the time I felt ready to pick up the book, as any bibliophile can attest, I had so many other books on the shelf competing for my attention that time simply got away from me.
Unfortunately, the very concern that made me hesitant to pick up The Enigma in 2012 is the very reason that, in 2017, I was forced to put it down unfinished. In the prologue I learned that Andrew Hodges, the biographer, is an Oxford mathematician who has contributed to the field through his work in “twister theory,” a subject whose Wikipedia page I didn’t even try to understand. Of course, this makes Hodges the perfect match for writing about a genius like Turing, but it also makes the work quite difficult for the layman to read. I greatly enjoyed reading the passages about Turing’s childhood and school days — for example, I learned that he had trouble discerning left from right as a boy, and always put a mark on his left thumb to tell the difference — but once I started entering the chapters about his work, I was totally lost.
I attended school for liberal arts, and while I did well in high school algebra and calculus and even took a statistics class in college, math has never been something I retained well or enjoyed. While reading Hodges’ explanations, I found myself reading the same paragraphs over again in an attempt to grasp the meaning. If I skipped a math-heavy section in an attempt to rejoin the saga of Turing’s life, however, the biography did not make as much sense, as it was missing the most crucial element. Regrettably, it seemed that this book and I were ill-matched.
I would recommend Alan Turing: The Enigma to anyone who wants to learn more about the life of this underappreciated, truly remarkable man, someone who has been largely forgotten by history outside of his native country and who was oppressed during his lifetime for being who he was. HOWEVER, I think a necessary prerequisite of reading this text may also be a good grasp of higher-level mathematics and some basic computer hardware terminology. For myself, I hope to be back with you at some point in the future with a Turing biography that is more accessible to me.
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