The most recommended Alan Turing books

Who picked these books? Meet our 21 experts.

21 authors created a book list connected to Alan Turing, and here are their favorite Alan Turing books.
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Book cover of Alan Turing: The Enigma

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

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

Why am I passionate about this?

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, itā€™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

C.A. Farlow 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 ā€˜universal machineā€™. 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 societyā€™s labelling of homosexuality as a crime.

We still live in this world ofā€¦

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 innerā€¦


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

Andrew Hodges Author Of Alan Turing: The Enigma

From my list on Alan Turingā€™s world.

Why am I passionate about this?

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 Turingā€™s life and work.

Andrew's book list on Alan Turingā€™s world

Andrew Hodges 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 ā€˜seven livesā€™. 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 Turingā€™s fingernails at Kingā€™s College, Cambridge. There is much more to illustrate the extraordinary Kingā€™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 Ć©lite culture in which it was hatched may still surprise readers. When Turing started war work at Bletchley Park, he wrote to Keynesā€™s circle that Dillwyn Knox was ā€˜his bossā€™. Did he know, as Richard Davenport-Hines explains, that Knox had beenā€¦

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 wasā€¦


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 my list on environmental and cli-fi adventures.

Why am I passionate about this?

I learned to love nature early, from the tadpoles in the swamps of ā€˜myā€™ 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, Iā€™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 youā€™ll enjoy this latest effort.

Brooks' book list on environmental and cli-fi adventures

Brooks B. Yeager 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. Itā€™s the story of John Oā€™Neill and Theodore Parker, two of the 20th centuryā€™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 ā€“ he ended up knowing and recording the calls of more than 4000 bird species ā€“ shows up as a colorful character with all the quirks of other great scientific iconoclasts such as Alan Turing and Robert Oppenheimer. 

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


Book cover of Ada's Algorithm: How Lord Byron's Daughter Ada Lovelace Launched the Digital Age

Ben Forta Author Of Captain Code: Unleash Your Coding Superpower with Python

From my list on when you really need to get away, without actually getting away.

Why am I passionate about this?

I read and write lots and love doing so. So when I need a break, the last thing I want is another book, right? Wrong! I take a break with books, and I love fun books that are an escape from the normal day-to-day, ones that wonā€™t lull you to sleep, ones that end too quickly. Itā€™s a sickness, I know, and Iā€™ll deal with it as soon as I have worked through this pile of books on my desk.

Ben's book list on when you really need to get away, without actually getting away

Ben Forta Why did Ben love this book?

Iā€™m a geek; Iā€™m ok with that, and I fully embrace that reality. I love books that tell the stories of the early pioneers who brought about computing as we know it. And few figures are as important and underappreciated as Lady Ava Lovelace.

She literally created what we now call ā€œcomputer programming languagesā€ before there were modern computers and electricity was widely available! Oh, and she did this before she died at age 33. This is a feel-good, inspiring tale of a woman well ahead of her time.

By James Essinger,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

ā€œ[Ada Lovelace], like Steve Jobs, stands at the intersection of arts and technology."ā€”Walter Isaacson, author of The Innovators

Over 150 years after her death, a widely-used scientific computer program was named ā€œAda,ā€ after Ada Lovelace, the only legitimate daughter of the eighteenth centuryā€™s version of a rock star, Lord Byron. Why?

Because, after computer pioneers such as Alan Turing began to rediscover her, it slowly became apparent that she had been a key but overlooked figure in the invention of the computer.

In Ada Lovelace, James Essinger makes the case that the computer age could have started two centuries agoā€¦


Book cover of Alan Turing's Manchester

Andrew Hodges Author Of Alan Turing: The Enigma

From my list on Alan Turingā€™s world.

Why am I passionate about this?

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 Turingā€™s life and work.

Andrew's book list on Alan Turingā€™s world

Andrew Hodges 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 Turingā€™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.

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 couldā€¦


Book cover of The Myth of Artificial Intelligence: Why Computers Can't Think the Way We Do

Noreen Herzfeld Author Of The Artifice of Intelligence: Divine and Human Relationship in a Robotic Age

From my list on the dangerous future of AI.

Why am I passionate about this?

Iā€™m a theologian who started out as a computer scientist. Teaching classes on AI got me wondering, not just whether weā€™d ever be able to create a human-like AI, but why we wanted to do so in the first place. It seemed to me that computers were the most helpful when they did the things we are not very good atā€”crunching big calculations, or exploring Marsā€”stuff we canā€™t do. That got me thinking that there might be something spiritual going on, that in a world where we increasingly no longer believed in God or angels, we were lonely. That we didnā€™t want a tool but a companion.  

Noreen's book list on the dangerous future of AI

Noreen Herzfeld Why did Noreen love this book?

Thereā€™s a lot of fear-mongering going around regarding the possibility of a superintelligent AI that could take over or even wipe out humanity. 

Larson gives a clear rationale for why this is not going to happen and further, why it is a big mistake to expect computer reasoning to be like human reasoning. He explains the ways computers think and how they differ from the ways we do. 

In short, we donā€™t have a clue how to give computers either consciousness or common sense. Without these, worrying about superhuman intelligence is worrying about the wrong thing. There is no way a computer using current AI methods could evolve into a general intelligence.  

By Erik J. Larson,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

"If you want to know about AI, read this book...It shows how a supposedly futuristic reverence for Artificial Intelligence retards progress when it denigrates our most irreplaceable resource for any future progress: our own human intelligence."-Peter Thiel

A cutting-edge AI researcher and tech entrepreneur debunks the fantasy that superintelligence is just a few clicks away-and argues that this myth is not just wrong, it's actively blocking innovation and distorting our ability to make the crucial next leap.

Futurists insist that AI will soon eclipse the capacities of the most gifted human mind. What hope do we have against superintelligent machines?ā€¦


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

Andrew Hodges Author Of Alan Turing: The Enigma

From my list on Alan Turingā€™s world.

Why am I passionate about this?

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 Turingā€™s life and work.

Andrew's book list on Alan Turingā€™s world

Andrew Hodges Why did Andrew love this book?

My second choice relates more subtly to Turingā€™s sudden end in 1954. In 1955, Turingā€™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. 

Penroseā€™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-centuryā€¦

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-computableā€¦


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 my list on mind bending scientific discovery and courageous rethinking.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a scientist and technologist, trained in theoretical quantum physics, who became an Emeritus Professor of Network Technology from Osloā€™s metropolitan university. Iā€™ve strenuously tried to communicate the wonder of science to students and industry throughout my career. Iā€™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 someoneā€™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

Mark Burgess 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 ā€œsimple" daubs of colour.

Coen explains ideas that go back to Alan Turingā€™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.

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 significanceā€¦


Book cover of Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture

Manil Suri Author Of The Big Bang of Numbers: How to Build the Universe Using Only Math

From my list on to make you fall in love with mathematics.

Why am I passionate about this?

Iā€™m a mathematics professor who ended up writing the internationally bestselling novel The Death of Vishnu (along with two follow-ups) and became better known as an author. For the past decade and a half, Iā€™ve been using my storytelling skills to make mathematics more accessible (and enjoyable!) to a broad audience. Being a novelist has helped me look at mathematics in a new light, and realize the subject is not so much about the calculations feared by so many, but rather, about ideas. We can all enjoy such ideas, and thereby learn to understand, appreciate, and even love math. 

Manil's book list on to make you fall in love with mathematics

Manil Suri Why did Manil love this book?

For me, this book got the closest to the nitty-gritty of why mathematicians like me, whose job is to prove theorems, find this activity so compelling.

Itā€™s always been the long hunt, with all the frustration as well as the occasional success, that Iā€™ve found so addictive. Doxiadis brought out the nuances of such pursuits brilliantly ā€“ the wily Uncle Petros tells the narrator to prove a mathematical statement despite knowing it is almost surely false.

Ah, these little tricks that we mathematicians enjoy playing on unsuspecting souls (Iā€™ve been known to do this to my students a couple of times).

By Apostolos Doxiadis,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Uncle Petros is a family joke. An ageing recluse, he lives alone in a suburb of Athens, playing chess and tending to his garden. If you didn't know better, you'd surely think he was one of life's failures. But his young nephew suspects otherwise. For Uncle Petros, he discovers, was once a celebrated mathematician, brilliant and foolhardy enough to stake everything on solving a problem that had defied all attempts at proof for nearly three centuries - Goldbach's Conjecture.

His quest brings him into contact with some of the century's greatest mathematicians, including the Indian prodigy Ramanujan and the youngā€¦


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

Andrew Hodges Author Of Alan Turing: The Enigma

From my list on Alan Turingā€™s world.

Why am I passionate about this?

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 Turingā€™s life and work.

Andrew's book list on Alan Turingā€™s world

Andrew Hodges 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 Turingā€™s. The Second World War brought both of them, hitherto pure researchers, to intense and crucial involvement in the worldā€™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 ā€˜I detest Americaā€™ he might well have been reacting to the McCarthy period in which Oppenheimer was attacked. But Ray Monk treats Oppenheimerā€™s pure scientific work as seriously as the political story. Oppenheimerā€™s 1939 paper on black holes was the background to Penroseā€™s 1965 paper cited in the Nobel physics prize of 2020. These dates illustrate the deep and decades-spanning connections that are involvedā€¦

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 ofā€¦


Book cover of Alan Turing: The Enigma
Book cover of Universal Man: The Seven Lives of John Maynard Keynes
Book cover of A Parrot Without a Name: The Search for the Last Unknown Birds on Earth

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