Davis, Martin : New York University / University of California-Berkeley
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.
Summary
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.
