This New York Times–bestselling biography of the founder of computer science, with a new preface by the author that addresses Turing’s royal pardon in 2013, is the definitive account of an extraordinary mind and life.Ĭapturing both the inner and outer drama of Turing’s life, Andrew Hodges tells how Turing’s revolutionary idea of 1936 - the concept of a universal machine - laid the foundation for the modern computer and how Turing brought the idea to practical realization in 1945 with his electronic design. This is probably as valid an interpretation as the more technical ones presented in the other answers and the overall title is likely using that ambiguity for evoking meaning on multiple levels this way, just as the story itself juxtaposes Turing's personal problems with his historical achievements.It is only a slight exaggeration to say that the British mathematician Alan Turing (1912-1954) saved the Allies from the Nazis, invented the computer and artificial intelligence, and anticipated gay liberation by decades - all before his suicide at age forty-one. (As a side-note, the subtitle to the German version of the movie, "Ein streng geheimes Leben" ("A top secret life"), while maybe a little bit too much on the nose, emphasises this connection further.) So he himself is forced to play an imitation game, imitating a straight man. In fact a big emphasis of the movie, beyond the WWII spy story that already offers many possibilities for "imitation", is the rather personal story of Alan Turing and his struggles with being homosexual in a time where that wasn't really accepted at all. The other answers already draw some really good connections to various parts of Turing's work, be it movie-related or more general.
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