The best Alan Turing books

Who picked these books? Meet our 10 experts.

10 authors created a book list connected to Alan Turing, and here are their favorite Alan Turing books.
Shepherd is reader supported.
We may earn an affiliate commission when you buy through links on our website. This is how we fund the project for readers and authors (along with our membership program).

Alan Turing

By Andrew Hodges,

Book cover of Alan Turing: The Enigma

C.A. Farlow Author Of A Quantum Singularity: Book Three in The Nexus Series

From the list on mixing science, fiction, and adventure.

Who am I?

I grew up in farm country of central Indiana. But spent my summers on an island in northern Ontario with my grandparents. My grandfather was a self-taught naturalist and shared his love and fascination of the world around us with me. I went on to become a geologist and traveled the globe exploring for natural resources. My love of nature and science is the foundation for the science fiction I write. Whether a proven theory, a fantastical hypothesis, or true science fiction, it’s all based on science fact. It allows everyone to learn about a world built in science fiction which one day may exist in science fact.

C.A.'s book list on mixing science, fiction, and adventure

Discover why each book is one of C.A.'s favorite books.

Why did C.A. love this book?

This is a book that is at once a biography, a testament to human genius in the face of imminent danger, and a story of human injustice. Alan Turing had an idea about a ‘universal machine’. A machine, when built at Bletchley Park, allowed the Allies in World War II to crack the German Enigma ciphers. This universal machine laid the foundations for modern computing and all the amazing advances we enjoy today. But at a price for Turing, he fought inner demons about his homosexuality and eventually paid the ultimate price.

I marveled at his genius, cheered his cryptographic successes with each cipher cracked, shouted against the tragedy of his arrest, cried at his untimely death. A death at his own hand at the age of 41. The world lost a genius due to a society’s labelling of homosexuality as a crime.

We still live in this world of…

Alan Turing

By Andrew Hodges,

Why should I read it?

6 authors picked Alan Turing as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The official book behind the Academy Award-winning film The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley It is only a slight exaggeration to say that the British mathematician Alan Turing (1912-1954) saved the Allies from the Nazis, invented the computer and artificial intelligence, and anticipated gay liberation by decades--all before his suicide at age forty-one. This New York Times-bestselling biography of the founder of computer science, with a new preface by the author that addresses Turing's royal pardon in 2013, is the definitive account of an extraordinary mind and life. Capturing both the inner…


Book cover of A Parrot Without a Name: The Search for the Last Unknown Birds on Earth

Brooks B. Yeager Author Of Jaguar's Claw

From the list on environmental and cli-fi adventures.

Who am I?

I learned to love nature early, from the tadpoles in the swamps of ‘my’ New York woods to the scarlet tanagers that came through in the spring and the old tilted oak where I sometimes slept. In college in California, I became acquainted with the myriad ways in which we humans are still degrading the natural environment that is the prime source of our worldly and spiritual subsistence. Ever since, I’ve worked to protect the natural world, first as an activist, then a government official, then as a diplomat, and now as I write fictional intrigues set in the world we all need to conserve. I hope you’ll enjoy this latest effort.

Brooks' book list on environmental and cli-fi adventures

Discover why each book is one of Brooks' favorite books.

Why did Brooks love this book?

A Parrot Without a Name is the tale of a quest as primitive and compelling as any grail search from medieval legend. It’s the story of John O’Neill and Theodore Parker, two of the 20th century’s most accomplished birders and ornithologists, and their pursuit of the least known and most elusive birds in the whole of South America. Parker, whose death in a small plane crash in the Ecuadorian mountains cut off one of the most famous and unique escapades in birding – he ended up knowing and recording the calls of more than 4000 bird species – shows up as a colorful character with all the quirks of other great scientific iconoclasts such as Alan Turing and Robert Oppenheimer. 

A Parrot Without a Name

By Don Stap,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Parrot Without a Name as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Describes the work of two ornithologists, John O'Neill and Ted Parker, searching for unidentified species of birds in the rain forests of Peru


Before Enigma

By David Boyle,

Book cover of Before Enigma: The Room 40 Codebreakers of the First World War

Roseanna M. White Author Of The Number of Love

From the list on British intelligence in WW1.

Who am I?

Roseanna M. White is a historical fiction writer whose bestselling stories always seem to find their way to war, espionage, and intrigue. A fascination with her family’s heritage led her to tales set in Edwardian and Great War England, and she’s spent the last seven years studying that culture and how the era’s events intersected with things like faith, family, the arts, and social reforms. Of course, she does all this study and writing about war and mayhem from the safety of her home in West Virginia, where life is blessedly ordinary and no one expects her to actually crack any codes in order to survive...which is definitely a good thing.

Roseanna's book list on British intelligence in WW1

Discover why each book is one of Roseanna's favorite books.

Why did Roseanna love this book?

This is a short punchy book that provides a great introduction to the topic of codebreaking in England during the Great War, giving a sweeping overview and then some entertaining and tantalizing stories about the people involved. At just over a hundred pages, this is a quick read that serves as a fun introduction to the topic.

Before Enigma

By David Boyle,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Before Enigma as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

How did the British codebreakers succeed in cracking the apparently unbreakable Enigma code during the Second World War? Was it their gifted amateurism? The brilliance of Alan Turing? The invention of the very first computers? Or the pioneering work of Polish cryptographers? It was all of the above. But there is one other crucial factor, which is much less well known. The same team had done it before. The truth is that many of those most closely involved in cracking the Enigma code – Alistair Denniston, Frank Birch, Dilly Knox – had wrestled with German naval codes for most of…


The Art of Genes

By Enrico Coen,

Book cover of The Art of Genes: How Organisms Make Themselves

Mark Burgess Author Of Smart Spacetime: How information challenges our ideas about space, time, and process

From the list on mind bending scientific discovery and courageous rethinking.

Who am I?

I am a scientist and technologist, trained in theoretical quantum physics, who became an Emeritus Professor of Network Technology from Oslo’s metropolitan university. I’ve strenuously tried to communicate the wonder of science to students and industry throughout my career. I’ve been privileged to know some of the great movers and shakers of science in my lifetime and it always gives me great pleasure to open someone’s mind to new ideas. These books have been an integral part of my own intellectual journey. I hope these recommendations will inspire the youngest and the oldest readers alike.

Mark's book list on mind bending scientific discovery and courageous rethinking

Discover why each book is one of Mark's favorite books.

Why did Mark love this book?

This little-known book is a beautifully written story of how spacetime processes explain the world of biology and morphology (organism development), using the analogy of mixing colours in a painting to explain how complex forms emerge from “simple" daubs of colour.

Coen explains ideas that go back to Alan Turing’s pioneering studies of biological processes, as well as computation, in a way that was highly influential to me as a scientist. Most of all this is a fine story that will stay with you for years to come written in a personal voice.

The Art of Genes

By Enrico Coen,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Art of Genes as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'Coen's book is spiced with historic quotations and examples of plants' and animals' intriguing behaviour contains a wealth of interesting material Coen communicates his immense learning with a hundred appealing tales'

Max Perutz

How is a tiny fertilised egg able to turn itself into a human being? How can an acorn transform itself into an oak tree? Over the past twenty years there has been a revolution in biology. For the first time we have begun to understand how organisms make themselves. The Art of Genes gives an account of these new and exciting findings, and of their broader significance…


Shadows of the Mind

By Roger Penrose,

Book cover of Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness

Andrew Hodges Author Of Alan Turing: The Enigma

From the list on Alan Turing’s world.

Who am I?

I am a mathematician, based at Oxford University, following up the ideas of the Nobel prizewinner Roger Penrose on fundamental physics.  But I am best known for writing a biography of Alan Turing, the founder of computer science. I did this at a time when he was almost unknown to the public, long before computers invaded popular culture. And it meant giving a serious account of two kinds of secret history: the codebreaking of the Second World War and the life of an unapologetic gay man. Since then I have also created a supporting website. When I was drawn to find out about Alan Turing, it was not only because he was a mathematician. I seized the chance to bring together many themes from science, history, and human life. This broad approach is reflected in my recommendations. I am choosing books that hint at the great scope of themes related to Turing’s life and work.

Andrew's book list on Alan Turing’s world

Discover why each book is one of Andrew's favorite books.

Why did Andrew love this book?

My second choice relates more subtly to Turing’s sudden end in 1954. In 1955, Turing’s colleague Max Newman gave a talk on logic in his honour. This greatly impressed a student, Roger Penrose, who was also studying the quantum mechanics and relativity that had first fascinated the young Turing. Years later, Penrose announced an astonishing thesis relating logic and physics. This book explains the theory he developed. It claims that the brain must exploit quantum-mechanical physics that no computer can emulate. Turing famously promoted the prospects for computer-based Artificial Intelligence, but he would have taken this anti-AI thesis more seriously than any other argument: it takes up his own interests and develops his own kind of thinking. 

Penrose’s books are not about science, they are actually doing scientific thinking. His humour and wonderful pictures enhance the direct personal engagement. The theory is highly controversial but has set a remarkable twenty-first-century…

Shadows of the Mind

By Roger Penrose,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Shadows of the Mind as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The motivation for this book arose, in part, from a need for detailed replies to a number of queries and criticisms from readers of the author's previous book, The Emperor's New Mind , many of whom have gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid the conclusion that there must be something non-computational involved in thinking. Penrose searches for a means, within the constraints of the hard facts of science, whereby a scientifically describable brain might be able to perform the needed non-computational actions. He develops the argument of how quantum effects might have a fundamental relevance to consciousness and to non-computable…


Universal Man

By Richard Davenport-Hines,

Book cover of Universal Man: The Seven Lives of John Maynard Keynes

Andrew Hodges Author Of Alan Turing: The Enigma

From the list on Alan Turing’s world.

Who am I?

I am a mathematician, based at Oxford University, following up the ideas of the Nobel prizewinner Roger Penrose on fundamental physics.  But I am best known for writing a biography of Alan Turing, the founder of computer science. I did this at a time when he was almost unknown to the public, long before computers invaded popular culture. And it meant giving a serious account of two kinds of secret history: the codebreaking of the Second World War and the life of an unapologetic gay man. Since then I have also created a supporting website. When I was drawn to find out about Alan Turing, it was not only because he was a mathematician. I seized the chance to bring together many themes from science, history, and human life. This broad approach is reflected in my recommendations. I am choosing books that hint at the great scope of themes related to Turing’s life and work.

Andrew's book list on Alan Turing’s world

Discover why each book is one of Andrew's favorite books.

Why did Andrew love this book?

My fourth pick is another biography, of the economist John Maynard Keynes. Richard Davenport-Hines has divided up his account into ‘seven lives’. Yet by taking his personal life and sexual identity seriously, Davenport-Hines achieves an outstanding unification. Seriousness is not solemnity: readers will find here a delightful story about Keynes admiring Alan Turing’s fingernails at King’s College, Cambridge. There is much more to illustrate the extraordinary King’s College ambiance in which Turing found his home, and deeper connections: in late 1946, both were crossing the Atlantic, Keynes to rescue the British economy, Turing on his start-up of the computer industry. Keynesian economics are newly relevant now, but the liberal élite culture in which it was hatched may still surprise readers. When Turing started war work at Bletchley Park, he wrote to Keynes’s circle that Dillwyn Knox was ‘his boss’. Did he know, as Richard Davenport-Hines explains, that Knox had been…

Universal Man

By Richard Davenport-Hines,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Universal Man as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From the bestselling and award-winning author of 'An English Affair', a dazzlingly original thematic biography which throws fresh light on the greatest economist of the twentieth century.

John Maynard Keynes is the man who saved Britain from financial crisis not once but twice - over the course of two World Wars. He remains a highly influential figure, nearly 70 years after his death. But who was he?

In this entertaining biography, Richard Davenport-Hines gives us the man behind the economics: the connoisseur, intellectual, public official and statesman who was equally at ease socialising with the Bloomsbury Group as he was…


Inside The Centre

By Ray Monk,

Book cover of Inside The Centre: The Life of J. Robert Oppenheimer

Andrew Hodges Author Of Alan Turing: The Enigma

From the list on Alan Turing’s world.

Who am I?

I am a mathematician, based at Oxford University, following up the ideas of the Nobel prizewinner Roger Penrose on fundamental physics.  But I am best known for writing a biography of Alan Turing, the founder of computer science. I did this at a time when he was almost unknown to the public, long before computers invaded popular culture. And it meant giving a serious account of two kinds of secret history: the codebreaking of the Second World War and the life of an unapologetic gay man. Since then I have also created a supporting website. When I was drawn to find out about Alan Turing, it was not only because he was a mathematician. I seized the chance to bring together many themes from science, history, and human life. This broad approach is reflected in my recommendations. I am choosing books that hint at the great scope of themes related to Turing’s life and work.

Andrew's book list on Alan Turing’s world

Discover why each book is one of Andrew's favorite books.

Why did Andrew love this book?

Ray Monk has, like me, been drawn to the idea of a linear biographical narrative fusing life and work together. My third pick is his biography of the American physicist Robert Oppenheimer. This is a fascinating story parallel to Turing’s. The Second World War brought both of them, hitherto pure researchers, to intense and crucial involvement in the world’s affairs. Nuclear weapons for Oppenheimer were what codebreaking was for Turing. Afterward, both were at odds with the governments they had empowered.

When in 1953 Turing wrote ‘I detest America’ he might well have been reacting to the McCarthy period in which Oppenheimer was attacked. But Ray Monk treats Oppenheimer’s pure scientific work as seriously as the political story. Oppenheimer’s 1939 paper on black holes was the background to Penrose’s 1965 paper cited in the Nobel physics prize of 2020. These dates illustrate the deep and decades-spanning connections that are involved…

Inside The Centre

By Ray Monk,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Inside The Centre as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

J. Robert Oppenheimer is among the most contentious and important figures of the twentieth century. As head of the Los Alamos Laboratory, he oversaw the successful effort to beat the Nazis to develop the first atomic bomb - a breakthrough which was to have eternal ramifications for mankind, and made Oppenheimer the 'father of the Bomb'.

But his was not a simple story of assimilation, scientific success and world fame. A complicated and fragile personality, the implications of the discoveries at Los Alamos were to weigh heavily upon him. Having formed suspicious connections in the 1930s, in the wake of…


Alan Turing's Manchester

By Jonathan Swinton,

Book cover of Alan Turing's Manchester

Andrew Hodges Author Of Alan Turing: The Enigma

From the list on Alan Turing’s world.

Who am I?

I am a mathematician, based at Oxford University, following up the ideas of the Nobel prizewinner Roger Penrose on fundamental physics.  But I am best known for writing a biography of Alan Turing, the founder of computer science. I did this at a time when he was almost unknown to the public, long before computers invaded popular culture. And it meant giving a serious account of two kinds of secret history: the codebreaking of the Second World War and the life of an unapologetic gay man. Since then I have also created a supporting website. When I was drawn to find out about Alan Turing, it was not only because he was a mathematician. I seized the chance to bring together many themes from science, history, and human life. This broad approach is reflected in my recommendations. I am choosing books that hint at the great scope of themes related to Turing’s life and work.

Andrew's book list on Alan Turing’s world

Discover why each book is one of Andrew's favorite books.

Why did Andrew love this book?

My first pick is the one most directly about Alan Turing himself. After 1950 his attention turned mainly to his new theory of mathematical biology, but his death in 1954 left most of this work unpublished.  His ideas were 20 or more years ahead of their time and few people could assess them. Jonathan Swinton is a leading expert in this field, and has been studying Turing’s manuscripts for 30 years. But his book has a much broader range: he adds so much on the culture of Manchester and its region, with a particular focus on women both as protagonists and observers. He has also illustrated his story with a wealth of pictures.

Alan Turing's Manchester

By Jonathan Swinton,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Alan Turing's Manchester as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Manchester is proud of Alan Turing but does it deserve to be? Dr Jonathan Swinton explores the complexity of the city that Alan Turing encountered in 1948. He goes well beyond Turing as a mathematician, to cover wire-women, Wittgenstein and the daisy. This is a richly illustrated account of lives lived - and one life ended tragically early - in a post-war Manchester busy creating the computer. This is a book about the people one might have met in Turing s Manchester. It records the patronage of older men, triumphant from the successful prosecution of a scientific war, who could…