{"id":7936,"date":"2024-04-10T15:28:22","date_gmt":"2024-04-10T20:28:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=7936"},"modified":"2024-04-11T10:45:37","modified_gmt":"2024-04-11T15:45:37","slug":"avi-wigderson-wins-turing-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=7936","title":{"rendered":"Avi Wigderson wins Turing Award!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Back in 2006, in the midst of an unusually<\/em> stupid debate in the comment section of Lance Fortnow and Bill Gasarch’s blog<\/a>, someone chimed in<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Since the point of theoretical computer science is solely to recognize who is the most badass theoretical computer scientist, I can only say:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

GO HOME PUNKS!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WIGDERSON OWNS YOU!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Avi Wigderson: central unifying figure of theoretical computer science for decades; consummate generalist who’s contributed to pretty much every corner of the field; advocate and cheerleader for the field; postdoc adviser to a large fraction of all theoretical computer scientists, including both me and my wife Dana; derandomizer of BPP (provided E requires exponential-size circuits). Now, Avi not only “owns you,” he also owns a well-deserved Turing Award<\/a> (on top of his well-deserved Nevanlinna, Abel, G\u00f6del, and Knuth prizes). As Avi’s health has been a matter of concern to those close to him ever since his cancer treatment<\/a>, which he blogged about a few years ago, I’m sure today’s news will do much to lift his spirits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I first met Avi a quarter-century ago, when I was 19, at a PCMI summer school on computational complexity at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Then I was lucky enough to visit Avi in Israel when he was still a professor at the Hebrew University (and I was a grad student at Berkeley)—first briefly, but then Avi invited me back to spend a whole semester in Jerusalem, which ended up being one of my most productive semesters ever. Then Avi, having by then moved to the IAS in Princeton, hosted me for a one-year postdoc there, and later he and I collaborated closely on the algebrization paper<\/a>. He’s had a greater influence on my career than all but a tiny number of people, and I’m far from the only one who can say that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Summarizing Avi’s scientific contributions could easily fill a book, but Quanta<\/a> and New Scientist<\/a> and Lance’s blog<\/a> can all get you started if you’re interested. Eight years ago, I took a stab at explaining one tiny little slice of Avi’s impact—namely, his decades-long obsession with “why the permanent is so much harder than the determinant”—in my IAS lecture Avi Wigderson’s “Permanent” Impact On Me<\/a>, to which I refer you now (I can’t produce a new such lecture on one day’s notice!).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Huge congratulations to Avi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in 2006, in the midst of an unusually stupid debate in the comment section of Lance Fortnow and Bill Gasarch’s blog, someone chimed in: Since the point of theoretical computer science is solely to recognize who is the most badass theoretical computer scientist, I can only say: GO HOME PUNKS! WIGDERSON OWNS YOU! Avi […]<\/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":true,"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-7936","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\/7936","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=7936"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7941,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7936\/revisions\/7941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}