Comment

Turing's Cathedral

the Origins of the Digital Universe
May 23, 2013
Despite the title, only obliquely related to British mathematician and founder of the field of computer science, Alan Turing. Instead the focus is on von Neumann's development of early tube computers and their use in the design of thermo-nuclear weapons. If you'd like a sense of what it was like during those heady days at Princeton with von Neumann, Kurt Goedel, and Albert Einstein as faculty members, this is a good read. My only complaint is the author tends to lose focus and wander, rather than staying to the important themes and their resolution. In an apparent attempt to be provide the ultimate comprehensive biography, he gets bogged down in unimportant details, for example von Neumann's traffic tickets. This tends to make the going a little scatter-shot and tedius at times.