Turing Award facts for kids

Quick facts for kids ACM Turing Award
A statue of Alan Turing, the person the award is named after.
Presented by	Association for Computing Machinery
Country	United States
Reward	US$1,000,000

The ACM A. M. Turing Award is a very special yearly prize. It is given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). This award celebrates people who have made huge and lasting technical contributions to computer science. Many people call it the "Nobel Prize of Computing" because it is the highest honor in the field. As of 2025, 79 brilliant people have received this award. The most recent winners were Charles H. Bennett and Gilles Brassard, who won in 2025.

The award is named after Alan Turing. He was a British mathematician and is often called the "Father of Computer Science." Turing helped create the ideas behind theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence. He also played a key role in breaking secret codes during World War II.

From 2007 to 2013, the award came with a prize of US$250,000. This money was supported by Intel and Google. Since 2014, the prize has been US$1 million, thanks to financial support from Google.

The very first person to receive the award was Alan Perlis in 1966. The youngest winner was Donald Knuth, who was 36 when he won in 1974. The oldest winner was Alfred Aho, who won in 2020 at 79 years old. Only three women have won this prestigious prize: Frances Allen (in 2006), Barbara Liskov (in 2008), and Shafi Goldwasser (in 2012).

The Turing Award trophy from 1983, given to Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson, displayed at Nokia Bell Labs.

Understanding the Turing Award

The Turing Award is like a Hall of Fame for computer scientists. It recognizes individuals whose ideas have changed how we use and think about computers. These contributions are not just small improvements. They are major breakthroughs that have shaped the entire field of computing. The ACM, a global organization for computing professionals, presents this award every year.

Who Was Alan Turing?

Alan Turing was a truly amazing thinker. He was born in Britain and was a brilliant mathematician. During World War II, he helped the Allies by breaking complex codes, including the famous Enigma cipher. His work was super important for the war effort. Beyond that, Turing laid the groundwork for modern computers and the idea of artificial intelligence. He imagined machines that could "think" long before they existed.

Celebrating Computer Science Heroes: Past Winners

Here are some of the incredible people who have received the Turing Award for their groundbreaking work. Their ideas have helped create the digital world we live in today.

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  Maurice Wilkes, an early computer designer.

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  Marvin Minsky, a pioneer in artificial intelligence.

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  John McCarthy, who helped define artificial intelligence.

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  Edsger W. Dijkstra, known for clear programming.

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  Donald Knuth, author of "The Art of Computer Programming."

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  Herbert A. Simon and Allen Newell, who worked on AI and human thinking.

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  Michael O. Rabin, known for work on nondeterministic machines.

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  Dana Scott, who worked with Michael Rabin.

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  John Backus, creator of the FORTRAN programming language.

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  Tony Hoare, known for contributions to programming languages.

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  Stephen Cook, who advanced our understanding of computation complexity.

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  Dennis Ritchie, co-creator of the UNIX operating system.

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  Ken Thompson, co-creator of the UNIX operating system.

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  Niklaus Wirth, who developed the Pascal programming language.

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  Richard M. Karp, known for algorithms and complexity theory.

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  John Hopcroft, known for algorithms and data structures.

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  Robert Tarjan, who also contributed to algorithms and data structures.

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  Ivan Sutherland, a pioneer in computer graphics.

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  William Kahan, an expert on floating-point computations.

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  Fernando J. Corbató, who pioneered time-sharing systems.

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  Butler Lampson, known for personal computing environments.

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  Juris Hartmanis, who helped establish computational complexity theory.

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  Richard E. Stearns, who worked with Juris Hartmanis.

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  Edward Feigenbaum, a pioneer in large-scale AI systems.

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  Raj Reddy, who also pioneered large-scale AI systems.

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  Manuel Blum, known for contributions to cryptography.

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  Amir Pnueli, who introduced temporal logic to computing.

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  Douglas Engelbart, inventor of the computer mouse.

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  Jim Gray, known for database and transaction processing.

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  Fred Brooks, known for computer architecture and software engineering.

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  Andrew Yao, known for contributions to the theory of computation.

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  Kristen Nygaard, co-designer of the Simula programming language.

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  Leonard Adleman, co-creator of the RSA cryptosystem.

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  Ron Rivest, co-creator of the RSA cryptosystem.

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  Adi Shamir, co-creator of the RSA cryptosystem.

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  Alan Kay, who pioneered object-oriented programming and personal computing.

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  Vint Cerf, co-designer of the Internet's basic protocols (TCP/IP).

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  Bob Kahn, co-designer of the Internet's basic protocols (TCP/IP).

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  Peter Naur, known for programming language design and ALGOL 60.

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  Frances Allen, a pioneer in optimizing compiler techniques.

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  Edmund M. Clarke, who developed model-checking technology.

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  E. Allen Emerson, who also developed model-checking technology.

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  Joseph Sifakis, who also developed model-checking technology.

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  Barbara Liskov, known for programming language and system design.

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  Charles P. Thacker, designer of the first modern personal computer.

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  Leslie Valiant, known for contributions to the theory of computation.

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  Judea Pearl, known for probabilistic and causal reasoning in AI.

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  Shafi Goldwasser, who laid foundations for cryptography.

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  Silvio Micali, who also laid foundations for cryptography.

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  Leslie Lamport, known for distributed and concurrent systems.

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  Michael Stonebraker, known for modern database systems.

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  Whitfield Diffie, who invented public-key cryptography.

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  Martin Hellman, who also invented public-key cryptography.

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  Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web.

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  John L. Hennessy, known for computer architectures.

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  David Patterson, who also contributed to computer architectures.

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  Yoshua Bengio, a pioneer in deep neural networks.

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  Geoffrey Hinton, a pioneer in deep neural networks.

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  Yann LeCun, a pioneer in deep neural networks.

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  Edwin Catmull, known for 3D computer graphics and CGI.

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  Pat Hanrahan, who also contributed to 3D computer graphics.

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  Jack Dongarra, known for numerical algorithms and high-performance software.

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  Robert Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet.

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  Avi Wigderson, known for the role of randomness in computation.

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  Richard S. Sutton, who developed reinforcement learning.

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  Charles H. Bennett, who shaped the quantum revolution in computer science.

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  Gilles Brassard, who also shaped the quantum revolution in computer science.

See also

In Spanish: Premio Turing para niños