Today marks the US publication of THE IMITATION GAME tie-in edition of Andrew Hodges‘s ALAN TURING: THE ENIGMA, and what turns out to be quite the Alan Turing week!

The US edition of the book is published by Princeton University Press. The UK edition, published by Vintage Books, follows this Thursday – the same day as the movie opens in British cinemas (it opens in the US on 28th November). Here’s the synopsis…

The official book behind the film, THE IMITATION GAME. This is a dramatic portrayal of the life and work of Alan Turing, Britain’s most extraordinary unsung heroes, and the world’s greatest innovators.

Alan Turing was the mathematician whose cipher-cracking transformed the Second World War. Taken on by British Intelligence in 1938, as a shy young Cambridge don, he combined brilliant logic with a flair for engineering. In 1940 his machines were breaking the Enigma-enciphered messages of Nazi Germany’s air force. He then headed the penetration of the super-secure U-boat communications. 

But his vision went far beyond this achievement. Before the war he had invented the concept of the universal machine, and in 1945 he turned this into the first design for a digital computer.

Turing’s far-sighted plans for the digital era forged ahead into a vision for Artificial Intelligence. However, in 1952 his homosexuality rendered him a criminal and he was subjected to humiliating treatment. In 1954, aged 41, Alan Turing took his own life.

You can find out more about the movie by following its UK and US Twitter accounts. Check back tomorrow for more on Andrew Hodges’s book that inspired THE IMITATION GAME…