Michael Randolph Garey (born November 19, 1945) is a

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 ...

researcher, and co-author (with

David S. Johnson David Stifler Johnson (December 9, 1945 – March 8, 2016) was an American computer scientist specializing in algorithms and optimization. He was the head of the Algorithms and Optimization Department of AT&T Labs Research from 1988 to 2013, an ...

) of '' Computers and Intractability: A Guide to the Theory of

NP-complete In computational complexity theory, a problem is NP-complete when: # it is a problem for which the correctness of each solution can be verified quickly (namely, in polynomial time) and a brute-force search algorithm can find a solution by tryi ...

ness''. He and Johnson received the 1979

Frederick W. Lanchester Prize The Frederick W. Lanchester Prize is an Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences prize (U.S. $5,000 cash prize and medallion) given for the best contribution to operations research and the management sciences published in Engli ...

from the

Operations Research Society of America The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) is an international society for practitioners in the fields of operations research (O.R.), management science, and analytics. It was established in 1995 with the merger o ...

for the book. Garey earned his PhD in

in 1970 from the

University of Wisconsin–Madison A university () is an educational institution, institution of higher education, higher (or Tertiary education, tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. Universities ty ...

. He was employed by

AT&T Bell Laboratories Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...

in the Mathematical Sciences Research Center from 1970 until his retirement in 1999. For his last 11 years with the organization, he served as its director. His technical specialties included discrete algorithms and

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) ...

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 ...

scheduling theory In computing, scheduling is the action of assigning ''resources'' to perform ''tasks''. The ''resources'' may be processors, network links or expansion cards. The ''tasks'' may be threads, processes or data flows. The scheduling activity is c ...

, and

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 ...

. From 1978 until 1981 he served as Editor-in-Chief of the ''

Journal of the Association for Computing Machinery The ''Journal of the ACM'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering computer science in general, especially theoretical aspects. It is an official journal of the Association for Computing Machinery. Its current editor-in-chief is Venkatesan ...

''. In 1995, Garey was inducted as a

Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

References

External links

Garey's personal web page
University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Letters and Science alumni American computer scientists Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Theoretical computer scientists Living people 1945 births American textbook writers {{compu-scientist-stub