A rare manuscript belonging to British mathematician and code breaker Alan Turing has gone on show in Hong Kong ahead of an auction in New York where it is expected to fetch at least $US1 million.

The sale of the recently discovered notebook comes at a time of enormous interest in Turing’s life and work generated by Hollywood film The Imitation Game, which won an Oscar in February.

The extraordinary handwritten notebook from the early 1940s gives an intimate insight into the “father of the modern computer”, Bonhams auction house said.

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It features 56 pages of Turing’s notes on the foundations of mathematical notations and computer science.

“One would be hard-pressed to think of another scientist who has had a more direct impact on people’s everyday lives,” Bonhams’ History of Science and Technology department director Cassandra Hatton said.

“Our iPhones, our computers, the way aeroplanes are moved around – everything is done on computing and that’s all because of him,” she said.

Turing was a computer scientist, philosopher and cryptologist ahead of his time and played an important role in breaking the German Enigma Code in the Second World War, when he worked from Britain’s code breaking centre at Bletchley Park.

The manuscript will be auctioned on April 13 in New York with Bonhams predicting that it will fetch a “seven-figure sum”.

It will be on show to the public in Hong Kong until Sunday.