Avi Wigderson, Herbert H. Maass Professor in the School of Mathematics, Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), has received the 2023 ACM A.M. Turing Award for foundational contributions to the theory of computation, including reshaping our understanding of the role of randomness in computation, and for his decades of intellectual leadership in theoretical computer science, announced the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).

Wigderson is a leading figure in computational complexity theory, algorithms and optimization, randomness and cryptography, parallel and distributed computation, combinatorics, and graph theory, as well as connections between theoretical computer science and mathematics and science.

Credit: Andrea Kane, Institute for Advanced Study

“It’s important to point out that Avi Wigderson also received the Abel Prize, which is considered the most important honor for lifetime achievements in the field of mathematics,” said ACM President Yannis Ioannidis in a press release. “Being selected for the ACM A.M. Turing Award is a fitting follow-up—as mathematics is foundational to computer science and Wigderson’s work has connected a wide range of mathematical sub-areas to theoretical computer science.”

"I am excited that the ACM has again recognized with this award the theory of computation community, which has contributed so much to computing practice and technology," Wigderson said in a press release. "I feel lucky to be part of this extremely dynamic community, whose fundamental goals have deep conceptual, intellectual, and scientific meaning, well beyond practical motivations. My four decades in this field have been a continuous joyride, with fun problems, brilliant researchers, and many students, postdocs, and collaborators who have become close friends."

Prior to joining the IAS faculty, Wigderson held academic appointments at the University of California, Berkeley; IBM Research, San Jose; Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, Berkeley; Princeton University; and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has received such awards as the Rolf Nevanlinna Prize (1994); Levi L. Conant Prize (2008); Gödel Prize (2009); Donald E. Knuth Prize (2019); Abel Prize (2021); and Edsger W. Dijkstra Prize in Distributed Computing (2023). Wigderson is currently a Fellow of the ACM and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.

The ACM A.M. Turing Award, often referred to as the “Nobel Prize of Computing,” carries a $1 million prize with financial support provided by Google, Inc. The award is named for Alan M. Turing, the British mathematician who articulated the mathematical foundations of computing.

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