Mathematician Avi Wigderson wins Turing Award for advancing computer algorithms with randomness

Avi Wigderson, an Israeli mathematician renowned for his groundbreaking work in computer science, has been honoured with the esteemed Turing Award for 2023. The Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) to an individual who has made contributions of lasting importance to the field of computing.

It is often referred to as the Nobel Prize of computing and is named after Alan Turing, a British mathematician and computer scientist who is considered one of the founding fathers of computer science.The Turing Award was first presented in 1966, and it has since become one of the most prestigious awards in computer science.

This accolade recognised Wigderson's pioneering research into the utilisation of randomness to enhance computer algorithms. Expressing his astonishment at the award, Wigderson recounted, “The [Turing] committee fooled me into believing that we were going to have some conversation about collaborating."

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“When I zoomed in, the whole committee was there and they told me. I was excited, surprised and happy," he added.

At the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, Wigderson has spent decades unravelling the relationship between randomness and computational problem-solving.

Wigderson and his peers, in the 1980s, uncovered that integrating randomness into algorithms could enhance their efficiency. This discovery challenged conventional wisdom.

“We were wondering whether this randomness is essential, or maybe you can always get rid of it somehow if you’re clever enough,” he said.Among his contributions is elucidating the correlation between problem complexities and the role of randomness.

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Of particular importance is Wigderson's impact on the unresolved conjecture in computer science known as "P ≠ NP." By leveraging randomness, he uncovered specific scenarios where the distinction between easy and hard computational problems blurred.

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For his exceptional contributions, Wigderson will be awarded a $1 million prize as part of the Turing award.“You can’t imagine how happy I am that I am where I am, in the field that I’m in,” he said while adding, “It’s bursting with intellectual questions.”

(With inputs from agencies)