Research Catalog

Title

Turing's cathedral : the origins of the digital universe / George Dyson.

Author

Dyson, George, 1953-

Publication

New York : Pantheon Books, c2012.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xxii, 401 p. : ill., map; 25 cm.

Summary

• "Legendary historian and philosopher of science George Dyson vividly re-creates the scenes of focused experimentation, incredible mathematical insight, and pure creative genius that gave us computers, digital television, modern genetics, models of stellar evolution--in other words, computer code. In the 1940s and '50s, a group of eccentric geniuses--led by John von Neumann--gathered at the newly created Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Their joint project was the realization of the theoretical universal machine, an idea that had been put forth by mathematician Alan Turing. This group of brilliant engineers worked in isolation, almost entirely independent from industry and the traditional academic community. But because they relied exclusively on government funding, the government wanted its share of the results: the computer that they built also led directly to the hydrogen bomb. George Dyson has uncovered a wealth of new material about this project, and in bringing the story of these men and women and their ideas to life, he shows how the crucial advancements that dominated twentieth-century technology emerged from one computer in one laboratory, where the digital universe as we know it was born"--
• "Legendary historian and philosopher of science George Dyson vividly re-creates the scenes of focused experimentation, incredible mathematical insight, and pure creative genius that gave us computers, digital television, modern genetics, models of stellar evolution--in other words, computer code"--

Subject

• Von Neumann, John, 1903-1957
• Turing, Alan, 1912-1954
• Computers > History
• Turing machines
• Computable functions
• Random access memory
• SCIENCE / General
• BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Science & Technology

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 341-377) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Principal characters -- 1953 -- Olden Farm -- Veblen's circle -- Neumann János -- MANIAC -- Fuld 219 -- 6J6 -- V-40 -- Cyclogenesis -- Monte Carlo -- Ulam's demons -- Barricelli's universe -- Turing's cathedral -- Engineer's dreams -- Theory of self-reproducing automata -- Mach 9 -- The tale of the big computer -- The thirty-ninth step.

ISBN

9780375422775 (hardback)

LCCN

^^2011030265

OCLC

• 745979775
• SCSB-12081008

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library