{"id":5388,"date":"2021-03-17T22:19:46","date_gmt":"2021-03-18T03:19:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=5388"},"modified":"2021-03-17T22:19:46","modified_gmt":"2021-03-18T03:19:46","slug":"abel-to-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=5388","title":{"rendered":"Abel to win"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Many of you will have seen the happy news today that Avi Wigderson and L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Lov\u00e1sz <a href=\"https:\/\/www.abelprize.no\/c76389\/seksjon\/vis.html?tid=76390&amp;strukt_tid=76389\">share this year&#8217;s Abel Prize<\/a> (which now contends with the Fields Medal for the highest award in pure math).  This is only the second time that the Abel Prize has been given wholly or partly for work in theoretical computer science, after <a href=\"https:\/\/www.abelprize.no\/c54147\/seksjon\/vis.html?tid=54148\">Szemer\u00e9di<\/a> in 2012.  See also the articles in <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.quantamagazine.org\/avi-wigderson-and-laszlo-lovasz-win-abel-prize-20210317\/\">Quanta<\/a><\/em> or the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/03\/17\/science\/abel-prize-mathematics.html\">NYT<\/a>, which actually say most of what I would&#8217;ve said for a lay audience about Wigderson&#8217;s and Lov\u00e1sz&#8217;s most famous research results and their importance (except, no, Avi hasn&#8217;t <em>yet<\/em> proved P=BPP, just taken some major steps toward it&#8230;).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On a personal note, Avi was both my and my wife Dana&#8217;s postdoctoral advisor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.  He&#8217;s been an <em>unbelievably<\/em> important mentor to both of us, as he&#8217;s been for dozens of others in the CS theory community.  Back in 2007, I also had the privilege of working closely with Avi for months on our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scottaaronson.com\/papers\/alg.pdf\">Algebrization<\/a> paper.  Now would be a fine time to revisit <a href=\"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=2925\">Avi&#8217;s Permanent Impact on Me<\/a> (or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=BLxC3rGeWBI\">watch the YouTube video<\/a>), which is the talk I gave at IAS in 2016 on the occasion of Avi&#8217;s 60th birthday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Huge congratulations to both Avi and L\u00e1szl\u00f3!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Many of you will have seen the happy news today that Avi Wigderson and L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Lov\u00e1sz share this year&#8217;s Abel Prize (which now contends with the Fields Medal for the highest award in pure math). This is only the second time that the Abel Prize has been given wholly or partly for work in theoretical [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[31,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-announcements","category-complexity"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5388"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5389,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5388\/revisions\/5389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}