It began with Babbage: the genesis of computer science, by Subrata Dasgupta

摘要

Computer science is a relatively young subject compared to many sciences. That said, the leading computer scientist Tony Hoare, a classicist by education, has provocatively given presentations entitled ‘Great Ideas in Computing Science from Aristotle to Euclid’. However, many computer scientists consider Charles Babbage (1791-1871), the nineteenth-century mathematician and inventor of the mechanical computing machine the Analytical Engine, the ‘grandfather’ of the subject. In the twentieth century, Alan Turing (1912-54) is often considered the ‘father of computer science’ for what is with hindsight his foundational work in theoretical computer science during the 1930s, followed by more practical work on code-breaking during World War II, leading to modern computing as we know it. Thus starting the story with Babbage is a reasonable decision for the book, with a major restarting of the subject through Alan Turing (at Chapter 4 out of sixteen chapters).