The Universal Computer: The Road from Leibniz to Turing - Hardcover

Martin Davis

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393047857 ISBN 13: 9780393047851

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000

Synopsis

One of the world's pioneers in the development of computer science offers a mesmerizing history of computers.

Computers are everywhere today--at work, in the bank, in artist's studios, sometimes even in our pockets--yet they remain to many of us objects of irreducible mystery. How can today's computers perform such a bewildering variety of tasks if computing is just glorified arithmetic? The answer, as Martin Davis lucidly illustrates, lies in the fact that computers are essentially engines of logic. Their hardware and software embody concepts developed over centuries by logicians such as Leibniz, Boole, and Godel, culminating in the amazing insights of Alan Turing. The Universal Computer traces the development of these concepts by exploring with captivating detail the lives and work of the geniuses who first formulated them. Readers will come away with a revelatory understanding of how and why computers work and how the algorithms within them came to be.

About this title

About the Author

Martin Davis's other books include Computability and Unsolvability. A professor emeritus at New York University, he is currently a visiting scholar at the University of California-Berkeley.

Reviews

This thoroughly enjoyable mix of biographical portraits and theoretical mathematics reveals how a sequence of logicians posed the conceptual questions and contributed the crucial insights resulting in the development of computers long before the technology was available to build even the simplest machines. An intriguing portrait of the great 17th-century mathematician G.W. Leibniz, a pivotal figure in the history of the search for human knowledge, launches this account by New York University professor emeritus Davis (Computability and Unsolvability). Steeped in Aristotelian ideas of perfection but trained in modern engineering, Leibniz conceived the idea of a universal system for determining truth. His contributions to this system are as diverse as the ingenious Leibniz Wheel (an early calculating machine) and the notation used today for calculus. His ideasDin particular, his recognition of the deep connection between systems of notation and actual physical devices for performing computationDinspired mathematicians and logicians, including George Boole, Gottlob Frege, Georg Cantor, David Hilbert and Kurt G del, until Alan Turing used them to develop the powerful mathematical tools that underlie modern computers as well as some of the earliest computer prototypes. After Leibniz, people thought about the problem of building computational systems; after Turing, people got busy building the machines. Davis has told the fascinating story in between. Full of well-honed anecdotes and telling detail, the book reads like a masterful lecture. Presenting key mathematical ideas in moderate depth, it also offers a solid introduction to the field of computer science that will captivate motivated readers. Agent, Alex Hoyt.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

"As computers have evolved from the room-filling behemoths that were the computers of the 1950s to the small powerful machines of today that perform a bewildering variety of tasks, their underlying logic has remained the same," Davis says. "These logical concepts have developed out of the work of a number of gifted thinkers over a period of centuries. In this book I tell the story of the lives of these people and explain some of their thought." Davis, professor emeritus of mathematics at New York University, has devoted his career to "this relationship between the abstract logical concepts underlying modern computers and their physical realization." His tale encompasses seven mathematicians who contributed to that relationship: Gottfried Leibniz, George Boole, Gottlob Frege, Georg Cantor, David Hilbert, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing. Leibniz, one reads, dreamed of "machines capable of carrying out calculations." Boole put forward an algebra of logic. And on to Turing, who envisioned a "universal machine" that could play games like chess, be induced to learn much as a child does and ultimately "could be made to exhibit behavior one would be led to call intelligent." Davis believes that the story he tells "underscores the power of ideas and the futility of predicting where they will lead."

EDITORS OF SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393047857
• ISBN 13: 9780393047851
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256