Name: Leonid Anatolievich Levin
Born: November 2, 1948, in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union
Computer-related contributions
- Soviet-American computer scientist.
- Known for his work in the following:
- Randomness in computing
- Algorithmic complexity and intractability
- Aaverage-case complexity
- Foundations of mathematics and computer science
- Algorithmic probability
- A theory of computation
- Information theory.
- Levin and Stephen Cook independently discovered the existence of NP-complete problems. The NP-completeness theorem, often called the Cook-Levin Theorem, was a basis for one of the seven Millennium Prize Problems declared by the Clay Mathematics Institute with a $1,000,000 prize offered. The Cook–Levin theorem was a breakthrough in computer science and an important step in the development of the theory of computational complexity.
Significant publications
- Randomness and non-determinism (1992).
- Average case complete problems; One-way functions and pseudorandom generators; Computational complexity of functions (1985).
Honors and awards
Awarded the Knuth Prize (2012).
Randomness in computing
Algorithmic complexity and intractability
Aaverage-case complexity
Foundations of mathematics and computer science
Algorithmic probability
A theory of computation
Information theory.