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Gödel Prize facts for kids

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1925 kurt gödel
Kurt Gödel

The Gödel Prize is a special award given every year for amazing research papers in theoretical computer science. This field explores the basic ideas behind computers and how they 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 very smart mathematician. He was one of the first to think about a famous puzzle in computer science called the "P versus NP" question. In 1956, he wrote a letter asking if certain hard problems could be solved very quickly by computers.

What is the Gödel Prize?

The Gödel Prize celebrates important discoveries in how computers work and solve problems. It focuses on the ideas and theories behind computer programs and algorithms. The prize has been given out since 1993.

When and Where is it Awarded?

The prize is given out at two major computer science conferences. In even-numbered years, it's awarded at ICALP, which stands for the International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming. This is a big conference held in Europe. In odd-numbered years, it's given at STOC, the ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing. This conference takes place in North America.

How Do Papers Qualify?

To win the Gödel Prize, a research paper must have been published in a scientific journal. It needs to have been published within the last 14 years. The winners also receive US$5000.

How Winners Are Chosen

A special committee of six members 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.

Gödel Prize vs. Knuth Prize

The Gödel Prize is given for outstanding research papers. It recognizes a specific piece of work. In contrast, the Knuth Prize is awarded to individuals for their overall big impact on the field of theoretical computer science. It celebrates a person's lifetime achievements.

Recipients

Year Name(s) Notes Publication year
1993 László Babai, Shafi Goldwasser, Silvio Micali, Shlomo Moran, and Charles Rackoff for creating interactive proof systems 1988, 1989
1994 Johan Håstad for showing limits on how small certain computer circuits can be 1989
1995 Neil Immerman and Róbert Szelepcsényi for their theorem about how much memory computers need for some problems 1988, 1988
1996 Mark Jerrum and Alistair Sinclair for their work on Markov chains and estimating complex math problems 1989, 1989
1997 Joseph Halpern and Yoram Moses for defining what "knowledge" means in computer systems 1990
1998 Seinosuke Toda for Toda's theorem, linking different types of computer problems 1991
1999 Peter Shor for Shor's algorithm, which can factor large numbers quickly using a quantum computer 1997
2000 Moshe Y. Vardi and Pierre Wolper for their work on temporal logic and how it relates to computer programs 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 and its uses in finding approximate solutions 1996, 1998, 1998
2002 Géraud Sénizergues for proving that certain computer programs can be checked for equality 2001
2003 Yoav Freund and Robert Schapire for the AdaBoost algorithm, used in machine learning 1997
2004 Maurice Herlihy, Michael Saks, Nir Shavit and Fotios Zaharoglou for using topology (a math field) in distributed computing 1999, 2000
2005 Noga Alon, Yossi Matias and Mario Szegedy for their important work on streaming algorithms 1999
2006 Manindra Agrawal, Neeraj Kayal, Nitin Saxena for the AKS primality test, which checks if a number is prime 2004
2007 Alexander Razborov, Steven Rudich for their work on natural proofs in complexity theory 1997
2008 Daniel Spielman, Shang-Hua Teng for smoothed analysis of algorithms, which helps understand how algorithms perform 2004
2009 Omer Reingold, Salil Vadhan, Avi Wigderson for their work on connecting graphs and solving problems in log space 2002, 2008
2010 Sanjeev Arora, Joseph S. B. Mitchell for finding a way to approximate the Travelling Salesman Problem quickly 1998, 1999
2011 Johan Håstad for showing how hard it is to approximate certain problems 2001
2012 Elias Koutsoupias, Christos Papadimitriou, Noam Nisan, Amir Ronen, Tim Roughgarden and Éva Tardos for starting the field of algorithmic game theory 2009, 2002, 2001
2013 Dan Boneh, Matthew K. Franklin, and Antoine Joux for their work on secure key exchange in cryptography 2003, 2004
2014 Ronald Fagin, Amnon Lotem [fr], and Moni Naor for algorithms used in middleware to combine information 2003
2015 Daniel Spielman, Shang-Hua Teng for their papers on solving complex math problems very quickly 2011, 2013, 2014
2016 Stephen Brookes and Peter W. O'Hearn for inventing Concurrent Separation Logic for computer programs 2007, 2007
2017 Cynthia Dwork, Frank McSherry, Kobbi Nissim, and Adam D. Smith for creating differential privacy, a way to protect personal data 2006
2018 Oded Regev for introducing the learning with errors problem, important in cryptography 2009
2019 Irit Dinur for her new proof of the PCP theorem 2007
2020 Robin Moser and Gábor Tardos for their constructive proof of the Lovász local lemma 2010
2021 Andrei Bulatov, Jin-Yi Cai, Xi Chen, Martin Dyer, and David Richerby for their work on classifying the difficulty of constraint satisfaction problems 2013, 2013, 2017
2022 Zvika Brakerski, Craig Gentry, and Vinod Vaikuntanathan for their big contributions to homomorphic encryption, which allows calculations 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 ways to solve the TSP are very complex 2015, 2017
2024 Ryan Williams for his work on understanding the limits of computer circuits 2011
2025 Eshan Chattopadhyay and David Zuckerman for their work on "extractors," which are important in computer science theory 2016

See also

Kids robot.svg In Spanish: Premio Gödel para niños

  • List of computer science awards
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