8 March 2005 Christos Papadimitriou's "Turing: A novel about computation"
I have no trouble in admitting that Christos Papadimitriou has always been one of my (admittedly quite a few) heroes in Computer Science. He is not just one of the great researchers in our science, but he also writes some very thoughtful general pieces on research and teaching that I would recommend to anybody with an interest in (Theoretical) Computer Science.
Recently, Christos Papadimitriou has also written a novel Turing (a Novel about Computation) published by MIT press in November 2003. I read that book during December 2003, and enjoyed doing so. It might not be the best novel ever written, but it is a good and instructive read. I strongly recommend it to all of you.
Now, you may wonder why I decided to post this piece more than a year after having read the book. This posting was prompted by Doron Zeilberger's Opinion 63: A Negative Review of Negative Reviews, where he defends Papadimitriou's book and Computer Science as a field against the negative review of a mathematician who "thinks that mathematicians are superior to computer-scientists", and expresses his opinion on negative reviews. Thanks Doron!
Last modified: Tuesday, 08-Mar-2005 14:17:03 CET.