Alan Turing: A Complete Guide to His Ideas, Theories, and Legacy (The Genius Codebreaker Who Helped Win a War and Paved the Way for Computers)

The year is 1930. The united states is still freshly reeling from the cataclysmic stock market crash the previous october, and is desperately attempting to claw its way out from the slippery pits of the great depression. 4,000 miles away, british prime minister ramsay macdonald is struggling himself to prevail over a reality that is as irremediable as it is inextricable: preserving the gold standard and providing adequate aid to the poor and unemployed, the latter of which there were reportedly two million of by year's end.Your child will explore:•A codebreaking hero: discover how turing helped turn the tide of world war ii by unraveling enemy ciphers, saving countless lives through his clever problem-solving.•Birth of the computer: learn about turing’s groundbreaking work on the first programmable machines—concepts that paved the way for smartphones, tablets, and more.•Thinking machines: dive into turing’s famous question—“can machines think?”—and how it sparked the field of artificial intelligence.•Hands-on inspiration: enjoy fun activities encouraging critical thinking, puzzle-solving, and creative leaps, mirroring turing’s inventive spirit.Beginning with his childhood fascination with numbers and puzzles, the book traces turing’s journey from an awkward schoolboy to a groundbreaking mathematician and codebreaker. In his early twenties, he developed the concept of a universal computing machine—what we now know as the theoretical foundation for all computers. He didn’t just imagine it; he described exactly how such a machine would function, years before the first computers were built.During world war ii, turing’s genius found urgent purpose at bletchley park, the british codebreaking centre. Here, he led efforts to crack the german enigma cipher, a seemingly unbreakable code used to coordinate military operations.