Avi Wigderson ( he, אבי ויגדרזון; born 9 September 1956) is an Israeli mathematician and
computer scientist
A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science.
Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...
. He is the Herbert H. Maass Professor in the school of mathematics at the
Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholar ...
in
Princeton
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ni ...
, New Jersey, United States of America. His research interests include
complexity theory,
parallel algorithm
In computer science, a parallel algorithm, as opposed to a traditional serial algorithm, is an algorithm which can do multiple operations in a given time. It has been a tradition of computer science to describe serial algorithms in abstract machin ...
s,
graph theory
In mathematics, graph theory is the study of ''graphs'', which are mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects. A graph in this context is made up of '' vertices'' (also called ''nodes'' or ''points'') which are conne ...
,
cryptography
Cryptography, or cryptology (from grc, , translit=kryptós "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adver ...
,
distributed computing
A distributed system is a system whose components are located on different computer network, networked computers, which communicate and coordinate their actions by message passing, passing messages to one another from any system. Distributed com ...
, and
neural network
A neural network is a network or circuit of biological neurons, or, in a modern sense, an artificial neural network, composed of artificial neurons or nodes. Thus, a neural network is either a biological neural network, made up of biological ...
s.
Wigderson received the
Abel Prize
The Abel Prize ( ; no, Abelprisen ) is awarded annually by the King of Norway to one or more outstanding mathematicians. It is named after the Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel (1802–1829) and directly modeled after the Nobel Prizes. ...
in 2021 for his work in
theoretical computer science
Theoretical computer science (TCS) is a subset of general computer science and mathematics that focuses on mathematical aspects of computer science such as the theory of computation, lambda calculus, and type theory.
It is difficult to circumsc ...
.
Biography
Avi Wigderson was born in
Haifa
Haifa ( he, חֵיפָה ' ; ar, حَيْفَا ') is the third-largest city in Israel—after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv—with a population of in . The city of Haifa forms part of the Haifa metropolitan area, the third-most populous metropol ...
, Israel, to
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
survivors. Wigderson is a graduate of the
Hebrew Reali School
, motto_translation = ''Walk Humbly''
, address = Hertzel 16
, city = Haifa
, zipcode = 3312103
, country = Israel
, coordinates =
, other_name ...
in Haifa, and did his undergraduate studies at the
Technion in
Haifa
Haifa ( he, חֵיפָה ' ; ar, حَيْفَا ') is the third-largest city in Israel—after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv—with a population of in . The city of Haifa forms part of the Haifa metropolitan area, the third-most populous metropol ...
, Israel, graduating in 1980, and went on to graduate study at
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...
. He received his PhD in computer science in 1983 after completing a doctoral dissertation, titled "Studies in
computational complexity
In computer science, the computational complexity or simply complexity of an algorithm is the amount of resources required to run it. Particular focus is given to computation time (generally measured by the number of needed elementary operations) ...
", under the supervision of
Richard Lipton
Richard Jay Lipton (born September 6, 1946) is an American computer scientist who is Associate Dean of Research, Professor, and the Frederick G. Storey Chair in Computing in the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He has ...
. After short-term positions at the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
, the
IBM Almaden Research Center
IBM Research is the research and development division for IBM, an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, with operations in over 170 countries. IBM Research is the largest industrial research org ...
in
San Jose, California
San Jose, officially San José (; ; ), is a major city in the U.S. state of California that is the cultural, financial, and political center of Silicon Valley and largest city in Northern California by both population and area. With a 2020 popul ...
, and the
Mathematical Sciences Research Institute
The Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute (SLMath), formerly the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI), is an independent nonprofit mathematical research institution on the University of California campus in Berkeley, Califo ...
in Berkeley, he joined the faculty of
Hebrew University
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; he, הַאוּנִיבֶרְסִיטָה הַעִבְרִית בִּירוּשָׁלַיִם) is a public research university based in Jerusalem, Israel. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Dr. Chaim Weiz ...
in 1986. In 1999 he also took a position at the Institute for Advanced Study, and in 2003 he gave up his Hebrew University position to take up full-time residence at the IAS.
[Short biography](_blank)
from Wigderson's web site, retrieved 3 May 2010.
Awards and honors
Wigderson received the
Nevanlinna Prize The IMU Abacus Medal, known before 2022 as the Rolf Nevanlinna Prize, is awarded once every four years at the International Congress of Mathematicians, hosted by the International Mathematical Union (IMU), for outstanding contributions in Mathematic ...
in 1994 for his work on
computational complexity
In computer science, the computational complexity or simply complexity of an algorithm is the amount of resources required to run it. Particular focus is given to computation time (generally measured by the number of needed elementary operations) ...
. Along with
Omer Reingold
Omer Reingold ( he, עומר ריינגולד) is an Israeli computer scientist. He is the Rajeev Motwani professor of Computer Science in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University and the director of thSimons Collaboration on the Th ...
and
Salil Vadhan
Salil Vadhan is an American computer scientist. He is Vicky Joseph Professor of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at Harvard University. After completing his undergraduate degree in Mathematics and Computer Science at Harvard in 1995, he ...
he won the 2009
Gödel Prize
The Gödel Prize is an annual prize for outstanding papers in the area of theoretical computer science, given jointly by the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS) and the Association for Computing Machinery Special Inter ...
for work on the
zig-zag product of graphs
In graph theory, the zig-zag product of regular graphs G,H, denoted by G \circ H, is a binary operation which takes a large graph (G) and a small graph (H) and produces a graph that approximately inherits the size of the large one but the degree ...
, a method of combining smaller graphs to produce larger ones used in the construction of
expander graph
In graph theory, an expander graph is a sparse graph that has strong connectivity properties, quantified using vertex, edge or spectral expansion. Expander constructions have spawned research in pure and applied mathematics, with several applicati ...
s. Wigderson was elected as a member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...
in 2011. He was elected to the
National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...
in 2013.
He was elected as an
ACM Fellow
ACM or A.C.M. may refer to:
Aviation
* AGM-129 ACM, 1990–2012 USAF cruise missile
* Air chief marshal
* Air combat manoeuvring or dogfighting
* Air cycle machine
* Arica Airport (Colombia) (IATA: ACM), in Arica, Amazonas, Colombia
Computing
...
in 2018 for "contributions to theoretical computer science and mathematics".
In 2019, Wigderson was awarded the
Knuth Prize
The Donald E. Knuth Prize is a prize for outstanding contributions to the foundations of computer science, named after the American computer scientist Donald E. Knuth.
History
The Knuth Prize has been awarded since 1996 and includes an award of US ...
for his contributions to "the foundations of computer science in areas including randomized computation, cryptography,
circuit complexity
In theoretical computer science, circuit complexity is a branch of computational complexity theory in which Boolean functions are classified according to the size or depth of the Boolean circuits that compute them. A related notion is the circui ...
,
proof complexity, parallel computation, and our understanding of fundamental graph properties".
In 2021 Wigderson shared the
Abel Prize
The Abel Prize ( ; no, Abelprisen ) is awarded annually by the King of Norway to one or more outstanding mathematicians. It is named after the Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel (1802–1829) and directly modeled after the Nobel Prizes. ...
with
László Lovász
László Lovász (; born March 9, 1948) is a Hungarian mathematician and professor emeritus at Eötvös Loránd University, best known for his work in combinatorics, for which he was awarded the 2021 Abel Prize jointly with Avi Wigderson. He ...
"for their foundational contributions to theoretical computer science and discrete mathematics, and their leading role in shaping them into central fields of modern mathematics."
References
External links
Avi Wigderson's home page*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wigderson, Avi
1956 births
Living people
20th-century American scientists
20th-century Israeli engineers
21st-century American scientists
21st-century engineers
Abel Prize laureates
American people of Israeli descent
Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery
Gödel Prize laureates
Knuth Prize laureates
Hebrew University of Jerusalem faculty
Institute for Advanced Study faculty
Israeli computer scientists
20th-century Israeli mathematicians
Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
Nevanlinna Prize laureates
Princeton University alumni
Technion – Israel Institute of Technology alumni
Theoretical computer scientists