ALAN TURING: THE ENIGMA, Andrew Hodges‘s critically-acclaimed biography of the mathematician and father of computing, is available in Japan. Published by Keiso Shobo in two volumes as エニグマアラン・チューリング伝, here’s the synopsis…

解読不可能といわれたドイツの暗号機エニグマを攻略した史上最強の暗号解読者であり、コンピュータ科学の創始者であり、同性愛で罪に問われるという数奇な人生を送ったアラン・チューリング。彼は何を考え、何を感じ、そして生きたのか。数理物理学者でもある著者アンドルー・ホッジスがチューリングの生涯を鮮やかに描き出す。

はしがきは『ゲーデル、エッシャー、バッハ』（白揚社）のダグラス・ホフスタッターが執筆。

The book was adapted into the Oscar-winning movie THE IMITATION GAME, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley and Charles Dance. ALAN TURING: THE ENIGMA is published in the UK by Vintage, and in the US by Princeton University Press. Here’s the English-language synopsis…

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.

The biography has also been published widely in translation. Here’s just a small sampling of the fantastic reviews…

‘A first-rate presentation of the life of a first-rate scientific mind… it is hard to imagine a more thoughtful and warm biography than this one.’ — New York Times Book Review

‘Andrew Hodges, in this fine biography… brings Turing the thinker and Turing the man alive for the reader and thus allows us all to share in the privilege of knowing him.’ — Financial Times

‘One of the finest scientific biographies ever written.’ — New Yorker

‘This rather shadowy figure has now finally been lifted into the light of day… it has to be said that Andrew Hodges has put together an extraordinary story.’ — Sunday Telegraph

‘Hodges’s biography is sensitive, sympathetic and uncompromisingly intellectual. The maths is extremely hard work – but helps the lay reader to appreciate the scale of Turing’s achievements.’ — Independent on Sunday