Chance awards the Turing Prize and $1 million to mathematician Avi Wigderson

Avi Wigderson, a renowned mathematician, has just been awarded the 2023 Turing Award by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), often described as the "Nobel Prize of Computing". This prestigious award, accompanied by a prize of one million dollars, recognizes his pioneering research on the role of chance in computational calculation.


A professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, Wigderson had already been honored in 2021 with the Abel Prize for his contributions to computer science. His theoretical work has notably influenced major advances in computing, such as cloud networks and essential cryptographic methods to cryptocurrencies.

Wigderson's approach has revolutionized our understanding of algorithms. Computer algorithms are naturally deterministic, meaning they operate according to predefined rules that allow for predictions. However, this characteristic limits their ability to handle randomness, which is omnipresent in the real world.

It was in collaboration with Richard Karp, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, that Wigderson discovered introducing randomness into algorithms could simplify the resolution of certain problems considered complex. This observation led to another major discovery: it is possible to remove randomness from probabilistic algorithms to transform them into deterministic algorithms.


These results have not only allowed for a better understanding of the link between computational complexity and chance but have also redefined certain fundamental aspects of computer science. According to Jeff Dean, Chief of Research at Google Research and Google DeepMind, "research on chance continues to yield significant benefits for our field, and Wigderson has opened new horizons in this area."