Biography
Stephen Arthur Cook OC OOnt (born December 14, 1939) is an American-Canadian computer scientist and mathematician who has made significant contributions to the fields of complexity theory and proof complexity . He is a university professor emeritus at the University of Toronto , Department of Computer Science and Department of Mathematics . He is considered one of the forefathers of computational complexity theory . He won the 1982 ACM Turing Award . Cook received his bachelor's degree in 1961 from the University of Michigan , and his master's degree and PhD from Harvard University , respectively in 1962 and 1966, from the Mathematics Department. [ 2 ] He joined the University of California, Berkeley , mathematics department in 1966 as an assistant professor, and stayed there until 1970 when he was denied reappointment. In a speech celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Berkeley electrical engineering and computer sciences department, fellow Turing Award winner and Berkeley professor Richard Karp said that, "It is to our everlasting shame that we were unable to persuade the math department to give him tenure." [ 3 ] Cook joined the faculty of the University of Toronto , Computer Science and Mathematics Departments in 1970 as an associate professor, where he was promoted to professor in 1975 and Distinguished Professor in 1985. Fields: Computer Science Education: University of Michigan BA Harvard University MA PhD Award Citation: .mw-parser-output .plainlist ol,.mw-parser-output .plainlist ul{line-height:inherit;list-style:none;margin:0;padding:0}.mw-parser-output .plainlist ol li,.mw-parser-output .plainlist ul li{margin-bottom:0} Turing Award (1982) Gödel Lecture (1999) CRM-Fields-PIMS prize (1999) John L. Synge Award (2006) Bernard Bolzano Medal (2008) Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering (2012) Officer of Order of Canada (2015) BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award (2015)
About the Turing Award
The ACM A.M. Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science. It is generally recognized as the highest distinction in computer science and is colloquially known as the "Nobel Prize of Computing."
Quick Facts
- Award: ACM A.M. Turing Award
- Added: 2026-02-07
- Source: Wikipedia
- Prize: $1,000,000 (USD)
- Presented by: ACM
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Notable Winners
- Donald Knuth (1974)
- Tim Berners-Lee (2016)
- Geoffrey Hinton (2018)
- Yoshua Bengio (2018)
- Yann LeCun (2018)