The Alan Turing Bibliography

This volume of the Collected Works includes introductory material and commentary by the editors C. E. M. Yates and R. O. Gandy, and also by Solomon Feferman.

• On Computable Numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem, Proc. Lond. Math. Soc. (2) 42 pp 230-265 (1936); correction ibid. 43, pp 544-546 (1937).

  Typographically reset in The Essential Turing.
  Original typography reproduced in The Undecidable.
  Typographically reset again in Stephen Hawking's mathematical sourcebook God created the Integers, with an introduction by Hawking.
  
  There is no complete manuscript or typescript of this work. However, six pages of the typescript survive because Turing used the reverse sides for manuscript notes on Normal Numbers. See them in the Turing Digital Archive here. The typing is not Turing's but the inserted mathematical expressions are in his handwriting.

  The paper is available on-line as a PDF file from ComLab, Oxford University. This is more legible than the original on-line HTML version. There is another pdf version but this may not show the characters correctly on your browser.

• Computability and λ-definability, J. Symbolic Logic 2 pp 153-163 (1937)

Scan of an offprint in the Turing Digital Archive

• The p-function in λ-K conversion, J. Symbolic Logic 2 p 164 (1937)


• Systems of logic based on ordinals, Proc. Lond. Math. Soc (2) 45 pp 161-228 (1939) This was also Turing's Princeton Ph.D. thesis (1938), and a typescript is in Princeton University library.
  Typographically reset in The Essential Turing.
  Original typography reproduced in The Undecidable.

  Scan of an offprint in the Turing Digital Archive

• (with M. H. A. Newman) A formal theorem in Church's theory of types, J. Symbolic Logic 7 pp 28-33 (1942)


• The use of dots as brackets in Church's system, J. Symbolic Logic 7, pp 146-156 (1942)

Scan of an offprint in the Turing Digital Archive

• Practical forms of type-theory, J. Symbolic Logic 13, pp 80-94 (1948)

  Scan of Turing's draft typescript and offprint of the published paper in Turing Digital Archive

Turing's unpublished manuscripts on mathematical logic have been edited for inclusion in this Collected Works volume:

• Some theorems about Church's system (three MSS, 1941)


• Practical forms of type theory II (1943-4)


• The reform of mathematical notation (1944-5)

• In April 1996 the National Security Agency (USA) declassified thousands of documents from the Second World War, including what was listed as:
  
  NR 964 CBCB55 9024A 19390000 TURING'S TREATISE ON THE ENIGMA

  This is the 1940 text by Turing on Enigma decipherment which was known as the 'Prof's Book' at Bletchley Park.

  Part III of the volume of the Collected Works includes a selection of pages from this text, together with a brief preface by myself. This preface is also available on this site. See also this page of the Alan Turing Internet Scrapbook for a few of the most interesting pages.

  A longer section of the text is included in The Essential Turing.

  A better version of the text was subsequently released by the British government and is in the (British) National Archives, HW25/3. This revealed another title: Mathematical theory of ENIGMA machine. In September 2001 the National Archives put a few of the early pages on-line, as the Enigma was 'in the news'; see the feature here.

  The Turing Digital Archive has a scan of the entire American copy.

  The text is not easy to read. An edited version of most of the text is available on-line, thanks to Ralph Erskine, Philip C. Marks and Frode Weierud.



• History of Hut 8 (c.1945) by A. P. Mahon. This history of work on the Naval Enigma problem was not written by Alan Turing, but especially in the early part, told his story. It is also in the National Archives.

  An excerpt is typographically reset in The Essential Turing.

  There is a copy in the Turing Archive (item B.27b), but it is not yet scanned.

• Report by Turing on U. S. Navy cryptanalytic work and their machinery, November 1942. National Archives, HW 57/10 (released October 2004). Transcript of the opening part of the report on this site.


• Report written by Turing in December 1942 after his visit to the NCR factory at Dayton. Ohio, where the American Bombes were being built. This report has also been released and may be read in its entirety on this website.

  This report has also been published with an introduction and annotation by Lee A. Gladwin of the US National Archives. See:

  • Visit to National Cash Register Corporation of Dayton, Ohio, and the following article Alan Turing's visit to Dayton, Lee A. Gladwin, Cryptologia XXV, pp. 1-17 (2001).


• There are further important memoranda by Turing on Enigma methods, not yet listed here.


• Speech System 'Delilah' — report on progress, 6 June 1944. Three-page typescript report in the National Archives, HW 62/6. I am indebted to Ralph Erskine for this.
  
  Transcript of the Delilah report on this site


• It is likely that there is further work by Turing yet to be released from government secrecy. One might conjecture about the following items: reports on the security of Allied cryptosystems; a 1945 report on his visit to Germany; a 1946 report for GCHQ on the potential of the digital computer he was designing at the NPL; a 1948/9 report for GCHQ commenting on Shannon's theory of communication and cryptography; a 1948/9 report for GCHQ on the potential of the Manchester computer; reports on the work he did for GCHQ between 1948 and 1952.