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Chris Bernhardt , Turing's Vision: The Birth of Computer Science . Cambridge, MA : MIT Press , 2016. Pp. 189. ISBN 978-0-262-03454-8 . £19.95 (cloth).
Most works considering Alan Turing are focused on his life, his tenure at Bletchley Park and code-breaking German encrypted messages during the Second World War. Chris Bernhardt departs from this body of work in Turing's Vision in that his work does not provide a historical analysis but instead focuses on the content and underlying mathematical concepts of Turing's first major paper, 'On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem' (hereinafter 'On computable numbers'). While this paper is often categorized as extremely complex and abstract, it does provide the foundational work needed for Turing's endeavours later in life and arguably marks the beginning of computer science. It is this paper which Bernhardt describes in Turing's Vision.
By explaining mathematical concepts required to understand the thesis and findings of 'On computable numbers' through a variety of figures and approaches along with a peppering of historical context, Bernhardt makes the paper digestible for any reader with a basic understanding of computational theory. Because of the importance of 'On computable numbers' within the computing field and the approachability of the paper achieved in Bernhardt's work, it is clear that Turing's Vision should be a required text in any introductory course within the fields of discrete mathematics, computational theory or computer engineering. For historians...