@book {IOPORT.02118474,
    editor       = {Copeland, B. Jack},
    title        = {The essential Turing. Seminal writings in computing, logic, philosophy, artificial intelligence, and artificial life plus `The secrets of enigma'.},
    year         = {2004},
    isbn         = {0-19-825079-7},
    pages        = {viii, 613~p.},
    publisher    = {Oxford: Clarendon Press},
    abstract     = {This edition aims at making Alan Turing's seminal writings on computable numbers, the enigma, artificial intelligence and artificial life easily accessible. The editor reaches his aim by not only presenting the texts in a scholarly edition, but also providing complementary comprehensive introductions to parts and chapters. The edition opens with a short biographical sketch of Turing. The material is organized in four parts containing 17 chapters with published papers, hitherto unpublished documents and reports, and correspondences. The first part concerns Turing's landmark paper ``On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem'', Proc. Lond. Math. Soc., II. Ser. 42, 230--265 (1936; Zbl 0016.09701). The part is opened by a 52 pages guide to computable numbers. The editor discusses the Turing machine, deals among other things with the relation between Turing and J.\ von Neumann in developing computing machines. He then adds a discussion on computability and uncomputability including the satisfactoriness problem, the printing and halting problems, the Church-Turing Thesis and the {\it Entscheidungsproblem} with a tutorial on first-orders predicate calculus and its undecidability. Finally an appendix co-authored by Andr\'es Sicard is added on subroutines and M-functions. The documents published start with Turing's famous paper (ch.\ 1), in the second chapter four texts with corrections and critiques are given: Turing's own correction from 1937, E.\ L.\ Post's correction from 1947, the draft of a letter by Turing to Church related to Post's criticism, and finally a paper by Donald Davies on corrections of programming errors he found in Turing's concept of the universal computing machine. Chapter three consists of Turing's doctoral thesis ``System of logic based on ordinals'' (1938) [see also Proc. Lond. Math. Soc., II. Ser. 45, 161--228 (1939; Zbl 0021.09704)] where Turing had made use of Church's Lambda Calculus. The editor's introduction provides the Princeton context based on Turing's letters home, and discusses, besides other topics, Turing's attempt to reinstall intuition in formal logic against Hilbertian formalists. The part closes with extracts from Turing's correspondence with Max Newman especially on unsolvability and incompleteness results. The part ``Enigma'' deals with Turing's deciphering activities at the Government Code and Cypher School, Bletchley Park, 1939--1943. The editor's long introduction gives, after a short information on the history of Bletchley Park, the working principle of the German Enigma machine. It goes into the Polish contributions in deciphering the German code, describes the ``bomba'' of the Polish groups, the forerunner of the Bletchley Park deciphering machine ``bombe'' and the subsequent ``spider'' using a diagonal board with increased effectiveness. The deciphering methods and the problems to be faced with are discussed, especially the difficulties of breaking the code of the Naval Enigma which was the task of a special working group (``Hut 8''). The documents published include Bletchley Park cryptographer Patrick Mahon's ``History of Hut 8 to December 1941'' (ch.\ 5), an excerpt entitled ``Bombe and Spider'' from Turing's 1940 report ``Treatise on the Enigma'' (ch.\ 6), the 1941 letter to Winston Churchill with the help of which shortages of typists and unskilled staff could be prevented (ch.\ 7), and finally Turing's 1941 memorandum to the US Navy codebreaking unit OP-20-G on the Naval Enigma (ch.\ 8). The beginnings of Artificial Intelligence are usually seen in the 1956 Dartmouth Summer Research Project, but Turing is clearly a precursor of it. Some of his contributions to what he called ``machine intelligence'' are collected in the part on ``Artificial Intelligence''. His interest in machine intelligence lasted from his years in Bletchley Park where he enthusistically discussed the mechanization of chess. It was also connected to his contributions to the construction of British computing engines, in particular the development of the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) and the Manchester Computers, he was engaged with during his time at the National Physical Laboratory from 1945 on. The texts presented include the 1947 ``Lecture on the Automatic Computing Engine'' (ch.\ 9), Turing's 1948 report on ``Intelligent machinery'' (ch.\ 10), his famous 1950 article for {\it Mind} ``Computing machinery and intelligence'' discussing the Imitation Game (Turing Test) (ch.\ 11), the 1951 radio presentation ``Intelligent machinery, a heredical theory'' (ch.\ 12), the 1951 lecture broadcasted BBC Radio ``Can digital computers think?'' (ch.\ 13), and finally the radio discussion recorded by BBC Radio ``Can automatic calculating machines be said to think?'' with Alan Turing, Richard Braithwaite, Geoffrey Jefferson and Max Newman as participants (ch.\ 14). The last part presents Turing as a precursor of research on Artificial Life: he was the first to use computer simulation to investigate a theory of the development of organization and patterns of living things. One of the first jobs intended for the Manchester computer concerned what Turing called ``chemical embryology'' starting from the hypothesis that the Fibonacci numbers could be useful for this simulation. His theory of morphogenesis used an idealized chemical process today called ``reaction--diffusion'' model. The documents printed include Turing's 1952 article ``The chemical base of morphogenesis'' (ch.\ 15), his 1953 essay ``Chess'' where he not only thought about chess playing machines, but also machines showing feelings and improving their playing skills themselves (ch.\ 16). The volume is closed by Turing's 1954 article ``Solvable and unsolvable problems'' in which he explains the Church-Turing thesis to a lay audience (ch.\ 17). This volume provides access to Turing's main working fields in a marvellous way. The editor not only presents the Turing seminal papers and ingenious contributions to fields he was far ahead his time, he also gives easy access for non-specialists by his comprehensive introductions and comments.},
    reviewer     = {Volker Peckhaus (Paderborn)},
    identifier   = {02118474},
}