INTRODUCTION
I have a copy of this exact very heavy, printed-in-Slovenia Springer version purchased for $32.50 in July 1999, and have read quite a few of the included papers, mostly in 2006-07. This is a valuable record of the thinking in 1987 of many of the premier logicians and computer scientists of that time, some of whom are deceased or are at least much further thru their careers by now.
HISTORICAL
As indicated in the book title, 1987 was the 50th anniversary of the hugely influential 1936-37 paper by Alan Turing called 'On Computable Numbers...', in which this universal version of his conceptual 'machine' was also described. In computability theory, a universal Turing machine can simulate any other specific Turing machine. Incidentally, 2012, 25 years after 1987, is being observed as the centenary of Alan Turing's birth in 1912.
THE WRITERS IN THIS BOOK
Martin Davis contributed two very good papers, and Sol Feferman, Stephen Kleene, Michael Beeson, Greg Chaitin, Charles Bennett, Roger Penrose, and several other notable scientists contributed to this collection. Robin Gandy's 63 page paper called 'The Confluence of Ideas in 1936' wonderfully lays out what was in the mathematical air to produce so much of the origin of computability theory and recursion theory in that particular year, centered mostly at Princeton University. Even the British Turing came to Princeton, New Jersey to do his Ph.D. under Alonzo Church there. Highly recommended! Gandy was one of Alan Turing's few graduate students at Cambridge University before Turing went into highly secret wartime code-breaking work at Bletchley Park.
THIS BOOK'S INFLUENTIAL QUALITIES
This Universal Turing Machine volume and the papers contained in it are frequently referenced in other books and in peer reviewed papers, so this is a very influential book.
HIGHER PRICE / ORDERED COPY 2 ANYWAY
Price is now 2.67 times what I paid for this book in 1999, but seeing that it is still available, on Tue 14Feb12, I did order a second clean reference copy, since I have marked up some of the papers in my present first copy as I read them. If still the same book build quality as I currently own, this is a physically hyper robust paperback that weighs over 2.5 pounds, much heavier than one would expect. Copy 2 arrived on Sat 18Feb12. Nowadays this book has only a normal light weight paper cover and is 1.56x as thick for its same 611 pages as the original, but weighs a bit less. A bit disappointing for much more money this time, but it will do its job as a clean unmarked copy just fine.
Price of this book has been creeping upward in late Apr12 into the lower $90s from the $87 dollars I paid in Feb12.
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SUPER INFLUENTIAL & MYSTERIOUS 'THE UNDECIDABLE'
Another, more long-mysterious very influential reference book became available as a Dover reprint in 2004. That is the much referenced book 'The Undecidable', edited in 1965 by Martin Davis. It contains many of the original 1930s papers by Godel, Church, Turing, Kleene, Rosser, and Post from that magic period Gandy wrote about in the present book. The Undecidable: Basic Papers on Undecidable Propositions, Unsolvable Problems and Computable Functions (Dover Books on Mathematics)
