Erik D. Demaine (born February 28, 1981) is a

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

and a former

child prodigy A child prodigy is defined in psychology research literature as a person under the age of ten who produces meaningful output in some domain at the level of an adult expert. The term is also applied more broadly to young people who are extraor ...

Early life and education

Demaine was born in

Halifax, Nova Scotia Halifax is the capital and largest municipality of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, and the largest municipality in Atlantic Canada. As of the 2021 Census, the municipal population was 439,819, with 348,634 people in its urban area. The ...

, to artist sculptor Martin L. Demaine and Judy Anderson. From the age of 7, he was identified as a child prodigy and spent time traveling across North America with his father. He was

home-schooled Homeschooling or home schooling, also known as home education or elective home education (EHE), is the education of school-aged children at home or a variety of places other than a school. Usually conducted by a parent, tutor, or an onlin ...

during that time span until entering university at the age of 12. Demaine completed his

bachelor's degree A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six ...

at 14 years of age at

Dalhousie University Dalhousie University (commonly known as Dal) is a large public research university in Nova Scotia Nova Scotia ( ; ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the fou ...

in Canada, and completed his PhD at the

University of Waterloo The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a public research university with a main campus in Waterloo, Ontario Waterloo is a city in the Canadian province of Ontario. It is one of three cities in the Regional Municipality ...

by the time he was 20 years old. Demaine's PhD dissertation, a work in the field of

computational origami The discipline of origami or paper folding has received a considerable amount of mathematics, mathematical study. Fields of interest include a given paper model's flat-foldability (whether the model can be flattened without damaging it), and the u ...

, was completed at the University of Waterloo under the supervision of Anna Lubiw and Ian Munro. This work was awarded the Canadian Governor General's Gold Medal from the

and the

NSERC The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC; french: Conseil de recherches en sciences naturelles et en génie du Canada, CRSNG) is the major federal agency responsible for funding natural sciences and engineering rese ...

Doctoral Prize (2003) for the best

PhD thesis A thesis ( : theses), or dissertation (abbreviated diss.), is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings.International Standard ISO 7144: ...

and research in Canada. Some of the work from this thesis was later incorporated into his book ''

Geometric Folding Algorithms ''Geometric Folding Algorithms: Linkages, Origami, Polyhedra'' is a monograph on the mathematics and computational geometry of Linkage (mechanical), mechanical linkages, mathematics of paper folding, paper folding, and Net (polyhedron), polyhedral ...

'' on the

mathematics of paper folding The discipline of origami or paper folding has received a considerable amount of mathematical study. Fields of interest include a given paper model's flat-foldability (whether the model can be flattened without damaging it), and the use of paper f ...

published with Joseph O'Rourke in 2007.

Professional accomplishments

Demaine joined the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2001 at age 20, reportedly the youngest professor in the history of MIT, and was promoted to full professorship in 2011. Demaine is a member of the

Theory of Computation In theoretical computer science and mathematics, the theory of computation is the branch that deals with what problems can be solved on a model of computation, using an algorithm, how efficiently they can be solved or to what degree (e.g., a ...

group at

MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is a research institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) formed by the 2003 merger of the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) and the Artificial Intelligence Lab ...

. Mathematical origami artwork by Erik and Martin Demaine was part of the ''Design and the Elastic Mind'' exhibit at the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

in 2008, and has been included in the MoMA permanent collection. That same year, he was one of the featured artists in '' Between the Folds'', an international documentary film about origami practitioners which was later broadcast on

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...

television. In connection with a 2012 exhibit, three of his curved origami artworks with Martin Demaine are in the permanent collection of the

Renwick Gallery The Renwick Gallery is a branch of the Smithsonian American Art Museum located in Washington, D.C. that displays American craft and decorative arts from the 19th to 21st century. The gallery is housed in a National Historic Landmark building that ...

of the

Smithsonian Museum The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

. Demaine was a fan of

Martin Gardner Martin Gardner (October 21, 1914May 22, 2010) was an American popular mathematics and popular science writer with interests also encompassing scientific skepticism, micromagic, philosophy, religion, and literatureespecially the writings of Lewis ...

and in 2001 he teamed up with his father

Martin Demaine Martin L. (Marty) Demaine (born 1942) is an artist and mathematician, the Angelika and Barton Weller artist in residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Demaine attended Medford High School in Medford, Massachusetts. After st ...

and

Gathering 4 Gardner Gathering 4 Gardner (G4G) is an educational foundation and non-profit corporation (Gathering 4 Gardner, Inc.) devoted to preserving the legacy and spirit of prolific writer Martin Gardner. G4G organizes conferences where people who have been inspi ...

founder Tom M. Rodgers to edit a tribute book for Gardner on his 90th birthday. From 2016 to 2020 he was president of the board of directors of Gathering 4 Gardner.

Honours and awards

In 2003, Demaine was awarded the

MacArthur Fellowship The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the MacArthur Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to ...

, the so-called "genius grant". In 2013, Demaine received the EATCS

Presburger Award The Presburger Award, started in 2010, is awarded each year by the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS) to "a young scientist for outstanding contributions in theoretical computer science, documented by a published paper o ...

for young scientists. The award citation listed accomplishments including his work on the carpenter's rule problem,

hinged dissection In geometry, a hinged dissection, also known as a swing-hinged dissection or Dudeney dissection, is a kind of geometric dissection in which all of the pieces are connected into a chain by "hinged" points, such that the rearrangement from one fi ...

prefix sum In computer science, the prefix sum, cumulative sum, inclusive scan, or simply scan of a sequence of numbers is a second sequence of numbers , the sums of prefixes ( running totals) of the input sequence: : : : :... For instance, the prefix sums ...

data structures, competitive analysis of

binary search tree In computer science, a binary search tree (BST), also called an ordered or sorted binary tree, is a rooted binary tree data structure with the key of each internal node being greater than all the keys in the respective node's left subtree and ...

graph minor In graph theory, an undirected graph is called a minor of the graph if can be formed from by deleting edges and vertices and by contracting edges. The theory of graph minors began with Wagner's theorem that a graph is planar if and only if ...

s, and computational

origami ) is the Japanese paper art, art of paper folding. In modern usage, the word "origami" is often used as an inclusive term for all folding practices, regardless of their culture of origin. The goal is to transform a flat square sheet of pape ...

. That same year, he was awarded a fellowship by the

John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was founded in 1925 by Olga and Simon Guggenheim in memory of their son, who died on April 26, 1922. The organization awards Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been ...

. For his work on

bidimensionality Bidimensionality theory characterizes a broad range of graph problems (bidimensional) that admit efficient approximate, fixed-parameter or kernel solutions in a broad range of graphs. These graph classes include planar graphs, map graphs, bounde ...

, he was the winner of the

Nerode Prize The EATCS–IPEC Nerode Prize is a theoretical computer science prize awarded for outstanding research in the area of multivariate algorithmics. It is awarded by the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science and the International Sym ...

in 2015 along with his co-authors Fedor Fomin, Mohammad T. Hajiaghayi, and Dimitrios Thilikos. The work was the study of a general technique for developing both

fixed-parameter tractable In computer science, parameterized complexity is a branch of computational complexity theory that focuses on classifying computational problems according to their inherent difficulty with respect to ''multiple'' parameters of the input or output. T ...

exact algorithms and

approximation algorithm In computer science and operations research, approximation algorithms are efficient algorithms that find approximate solutions to optimization problems (in particular NP-hard problems) with provable guarantees on the distance of the returned solu ...

s for a class of algorithmic problems on graphs. In 2016, he became a fellow at the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional member ...

. He was given an honorary doctorate by

Bard College Bard College is a private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The campus overlooks the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains, and is within the Hudson River Historic ...

in 2017.

References

External links

Erik Demaine

Documentary film featuring Erik Demaine and 14 other international origami practitioners * {{DEFAULTSORT:Demaine, Erik 1981 births Living people MacArthur Fellows Canadian computer scientists Theoretical computer scientists Origami artists Researchers in geometric algorithms Recreational mathematicians People from Halifax, Nova Scotia MIT School of Engineering faculty University of Waterloo alumni Dalhousie University alumni Mathematical artists Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory people

Early life and education

Professional accomplishments

Honours and awards

See also

References

External links