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Alan Turing (1912 — 1954) was a British mathematician who made history: His breaking of theGerman U-boat Enigma cipher in World War II ensured Allied-American control of the Atlantic. But Turing s vision went far beyond the desperate wartime struggle. Already in the 1930s he had defined the concept of the universal machine, which underpins the computer revolution. In 1945 he was a pioneer of electronic computer design. But Turing s true goal was the scientific understanding of the mind, brought out in the drama and wit of the famous "Turing test" for machine intelligence, and his prophecy for the twenty-first century. Drawn into the cockpit of world events and the forefront of technological innovation, Alan Turing was also an innocent and unpretentious gay man trying to live in a society that criminalized him. In 1952, he revealed his homosexuality and was forced to participate in a humiliating treatment program, and was ever after regarded as a security risk. His suicide in 1954 remains one of the many enigmas in an astonishing life story. "As vivid a picture as one could hope for a most complex and intriguing man," says Douglas Hofstadter, author of Gödel, Escher, Bach. Both a compelling narrative and a work of scholarship, Alan Turing: The Enigma is the definitive biography of one of the greatest minds of the modern world.