The Once and Future Turing: Computing the World

S. Barry Cooper · Andrew Hodges

Mar 2016 · Cambridge University Press

About this ebook

Alan Turing (1912–1954) made seminal contributions to mathematical logic, computation, computer science, artificial intelligence, cryptography and theoretical biology. In this volume, outstanding scientific thinkers take a fresh look at the great range of Turing's contributions, on how the subjects have developed since his time, and how they might develop still further. The contributors include Martin Davis, J. M. E. Hyland, Andrew R. Booker, Ueli Maurer, Kanti V. Mardia, S. Barry Cooper, Stephen Wolfram, Christof Teuscher, Douglas Richard Hofstadter, Philip K. Maini, Thomas E. Woolley, Eamonn A. Gaffney, Ruth E. Baker, Richard Gordon, Stuart Kauffman, Scott Aaronson, Solomon Feferman, P. D. Welch and Roger Penrose. These specially commissioned essays will provoke and engross the reader who wishes to understand better the lasting significance of one of the twentieth century's deepest thinkers.

About the author

Until his death in 2015, S. Barry Cooper was Professor of Mathematical Logic at the University of Leeds. He was both a leading figure in the theory of Turing computability, and a noted advocate of multidisciplinary research, especially in connection with the theoretical and practical limits of the computable. As President of Computability in Europe, he was responsible for many international conferences. He chaired the Turing Centenary Committee, and edited the prize-winning critical edition of Turing's publications: Alan Turing: His Work and Impact.

Andrew Hodges is a Senior Research Fellow at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford. His main research is in fundamental physics, as a colleague of Roger Penrose, but he is also the biographer of Alan Turing. His book Alan Turing: The Enigma (1983) has reached a wide audience and has inspired works of drama, music, art and film.