Name: Leonid Anatolievich Levin

Born: November 2, 1948, in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union

  • 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.