Gödel Prize facts for kids
The Gödel Prize is a special award given each year for amazing research papers in theoretical computer science. This is the part of computer science that studies how computers work and solve problems. The prize is given by two big groups: the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS) and the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computational Theory (ACM SIGACT).
The award is named after Kurt Gödel, a famous mathematician. He was one of the first people to think about a very important puzzle in computer science called the "P versus NP" question. This question is about how fast computers can solve certain types of problems.
What is the Gödel Prize?
The Gödel Prize has been given out since 1993. It's awarded at two major computer science conferences: ICALP (in even years) and STOC (in odd years). STOC is a big conference in North America, and ICALP is a major one in Europe.
To win the prize, a research paper must have been published in a special science magazine within the last 14 years. The winners also receive US$5000.
Who Chooses the Winners?
A committee of six experts chooses the winner of the Gödel Prize. The leaders of EATCS and SIGACT each pick three members for this committee. These members serve for three years. The committee's leader changes each year between someone from EATCS and someone from SIGACT.
It's good to know that the Gödel Prize is different from the Knuth Prize. The Gödel Prize celebrates outstanding papers, while the Knuth Prize honors individuals for all their important work in the field.
Recipients
| Year | Name(s) | Notes | Publication year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1993 | László Babai, Shafi Goldwasser, Silvio Micali, Shlomo Moran, and Charles Rackoff | for creating interactive proof systems (ways to prove things using computers) | 1988, 1989 |
| 1994 | Johan Håstad | for showing how hard it is for simple computer circuits to solve certain problems | 1989 |
| 1995 | Neil Immerman and Róbert Szelepcsényi | for the Immerman–Szelepcsényi theorem about how much memory computers need | 1988, 1988 |
| 1996 | Mark Jerrum and Alistair Sinclair | for their work on Markov chains (math tools for random processes) and complex calculations | 1989, 1989 |
| 1997 | Joseph Halpern and Yoram Moses | for defining what "knowledge" means for computers working together | 1990 |
| 1998 | Seinosuke Toda | for Toda's theorem, which connects different types of computer problems | 1991 |
| 1999 | Peter Shor | for Shor's algorithm, a super-fast way for quantum computers to break codes | 1997 |
| 2000 | Moshe Y. Vardi and Pierre Wolper | for their work on temporal logic (describing how programs behave over time) | 1994 |
| 2001 | Sanjeev Arora, Uriel Feige, Shafi Goldwasser, Carsten Lund, László Lovász, Rajeev Motwani, Shmuel Safra, Madhu Sudan, and Mario Szegedy | for the PCP theorem (a big idea about how hard it is to find good answers) | 1996, 1998, 1998 |
| 2002 | Géraud Sénizergues | for proving that it's possible to tell if two simple computer programs do the same thing | 2001 |
| 2003 | Yoav Freund and Robert Schapire | for the AdaBoost algorithm, a smart program that learns from data | 1997 |
| 2004 | Maurice Herlihy, Michael Saks, Nir Shavit and Fotios Zaharoglou | for using math shapes to understand how computers work together | 1999, 2000 |
| 2005 | Noga Alon, Yossi Matias and Mario Szegedy | for their important ideas for how computers handle huge amounts of data as it comes in | 1999 |
| 2006 | Manindra Agrawal, Neeraj Kayal, Nitin Saxena | for the AKS primality test, a fast way to check if a number is prime | 2004 |
| 2007 | Alexander Razborov, Steven Rudich | for natural proofs (understanding why some computer problems are hard) | 1997 |
| 2008 | Daniel Spielman, Shang-Hua Teng | for smoothed analysis of algorithms (how well programs work in the real world) | 2004 |
| 2009 | Omer Reingold, Salil Vadhan, Avi Wigderson | for clever ways to connect things in computer networks and solve problems with little memory | 2002, 2008 |
| 2010 | Sanjeev Arora, Joseph S. B. Mitchell | for finding a fast way to get a good answer for the "Travelling Salesman Problem" | 1998, 1999 |
| 2011 | Johan Håstad | for proving how hard it is to find good-enough answers for many math problems | 2001 |
| 2012 | Elias Koutsoupias, Christos Papadimitriou, Noam Nisan, Amir Ronen, Tim Roughgarden and Éva Tardos | for starting the field of algorithmic game theory (how computers make decisions in games) | 2009, 2002, 2001 |
| 2013 | Dan Boneh, Matthew K. Franklin, and Antoine Joux | for their work on Diffie–Hellman key exchange and the Boneh–Franklin scheme in cryptography (secret codes) | 2003, 2004 |
| 2014 | Ronald Fagin, Amnon Lotem, and Moni Naor | for smart ways to combine information in computer systems | 2003 |
| 2015 | Daniel Spielman, Shang-Hua Teng | for their papers on fast ways to solve certain math problems | 2011, 2013, 2014 |
| 2016 | Stephen Brookes and Peter W. O'Hearn | for inventing Concurrent Separation Logic (a way to reason about computer programs) | 2007, 2007 |
| 2017 | Cynthia Dwork, Frank McSherry, Kobbi Nissim, and Adam D. Smith | for inventing differential privacy (a way to protect personal data) | 2006 |
| 2018 | Oded Regev | for introducing the learning with errors problem (important for secure codes) | 2009 |
| 2019 | Irit Dinur | for her new proof of the PCP theorem (a big idea about hard problems) | 2007 |
| 2020 | Robin Moser and Gábor Tardos | for their clever proof of the Lovász local lemma (a tool in math and computer science) | 2010 |
| 2021 | Andrei Bulatov, Jin-Yi Cai, Xi Chen, Martin Dyer, and David Richerby | for their work on classifying how hard it is to count solutions for certain computer problems | 2013, 2013, 2017 |
| 2022 | Zvika Brakerski, Craig Gentry, and Vinod Vaikuntanathan | for their important work on building efficient homomorphic encryption (FHE) schemes (ways to compute on encrypted data) | 2014, 2014 |
| 2023 | Samuel Fiorini, Serge Massar, and Sebastian Pokutta, Hans Raj Tiwary, Ronald de Wolf, and Thomas Rothvoss | for showing that certain solutions for the TSP (traveling salesman problem) need a huge amount of space | 2015, 2017 |
| 2024 | Ryan Williams | for his work on circuit lower bounds (how hard it is for circuits to solve problems) and new ways to find them | 2011 |
See also
In Spanish: Premio Gödel para niños
- List of computer science awards
