Geniuses: Three Lives: Alan Turing, Thomas Edison, Rupert Brooke

by David Boyle

"Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see." Arthur Schopenhauer.

A collection of three short biographies by bestselling historian David Boyle.

ALAN TURING: UNLOCKING THE ENIGMA

Mathematician, philosopher, codebreaker, a founder of computer science, and the father of Artificial Intelligence, Turing was one of the most original thinkers of the last century - and the man whose work helped create the computer-driven world we now inhabit.

But he was also an enigmatic figure, deeply reticent yet also strikingly naïve. Turing’s openness about his homosexuality at a time when it was an imprisonable offense ultimately led to his untimely death at the age of only forty-one.
David Boyle reveals the mysteries behind the man and his remarkable career. Aged just 22, Turing was elected a fellow at King's College, Cambridge on the strength of a dissertation in which he proved the central limit theorem. By the age of 33, he had been awarded the OBE by King George VI for his wartime services: Turing was instrumental in cracking the Nazi Enigma machines at the top secret code breaking establishment at Bletchley Park during the Second World War.

But his achievements were to be tragically overshadowed by the paranoia of the post-War years. Hounded for his supposedly subversive views and for his sexuality, Turing was prosecuted in 1952, and forced to accept the humiliation of hormone treatment to avoid a prison sentence. Just two years later, at the age of 41 he was dead. The verdict: cyanide poisoning.

Was Turing’s death accidental as his mother always claimed? Or did persistent persecution drive him to take him own life?

THOMAS EDISON: SHINING A LIGHT

Thomas Edison is a detailed and insightful account of the life and times of one of the greatest minds in American history, and suggests the unique ways in which Edison managed to accomplish one of the most coveted attainments in our human lives: originality.

What was it about Edison’s life and character that shaped him into one of the world’s most prolific inventors, and father of the phonograph, motion picture camera and electric lightbulb, to name a few of his greatest achievements?
The inspiration that literally lit up the world was born, in part, out of Edison’s methodical approach to problem-solving, and relentless questioning. He realized it was not sufficient to observe that a method hadn’t worked; the valuable question was why? By quantifying his successes and failures, and constantly revisiting failures until they were resolved, Edison stayed ahead of the innovation game.

RUPERT BROOKE: ENGLAND’S LAST PATRIOT

Rupert Brooke defies categorisation, even a century after his death. He was both romantic and a cynic, a radical and a conservative patriot, a passionate lover and a shy emotional bully with a horror of the physicality of sex.

Yet he remains one of the few poets of his generation to still capture people's imagination today.
In this brief biography, David Boyle pinpoints the real Brooke and tells the haunting story of the final few weeks of his life - and how quickly after his death he became a legend, and a symbol of something he may not have quite intended.

David Boyle is a British author and journalist who writes mainly about history and new ideas in economics, money, business, and culture.

190 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 2, 2018

About the author

David Courtney Boyle was a British author and journalist who wrote mainly about history and new ideas in economics, money, business, and culture. He lived in Steyning in West Sussex.
He conducted an independent review for the Treasury and the Cabinet Office on public demand for choice in public services which reported in 2013. Boyle was a co-founder and policy director of Radix, which he characterized in 2017 as a radical centrist think tank. He was also co-director of the mutual think tank New Weather Institute.