Turing Award This year and Past

Something caught my eye the other day – a report on Avi Wigderson from the Institute of Advanced Study winning the year’s Turing award for his work on randomness. Bravo! Wigderson, who also won the Abel Prize in 2021, received the Turing award for his work on randomness. Specifically, to boil it down to basics, Wigderson’s work suggests that systems do not need randomness to be effective. The words “derandomizing” and “pseudorandomness” are sometimes used in this theoretical context. His work also touches on the idea of ubiquitous computation, and computation I nature, things that I have heard about from minds like Stephen Wolfram, etc.

When I saw this news, it made me think, for two reasons – first of all, because of my connections with the organization, and also because it seems like a lot of people probably don't know exactly what winning a Turing award means…

Starting with the second one first – the Association for Computing Machinery gives out an annual Turing award based on “lasting and major (contributions of) technical importance to computer science” in honor of the famed mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turning.

But where the name Alan Turing is familiar to a lot of people with a passing interest in technology, some people only think of him as an AI specialist, and others may only think of them as a code breaker in WWII.

In reality, Turing was both, and contributed more to the field than just the idea of a Turing test, where people put artificial intelligence entities through their paces in order to see if they can imitate human behaviors.

Anyway, many of us may not know that the Turing award puts the recipient in the company of greats like Marvin Minsky, John McCarthy, Barbara Liskov, Ivan Sutherland, Mike Stonebraker, and the last one was Bob Metcalfe, and that it comes with a 1 million dollar cash prize and a touring the world to give talks.

But going back to my sort of mental connections with Princeton's Institute of Advanced Study, I thought about how I have a connection to Freeman Dyson, who taught there, holding forth on topics like field theory, astrophysics, and his conception of a space-roving civilization’s survival constructs. And then there’s Esther, his daughter, who has her own tremendous legacy in the field, and elsewhere (she trained as an astronaut, sold a company to CNET, hosting important gatherings around web 2 with Jobs, Gates and Bezos etc.)

Another father-daughter duo connected to the IAS is Frank Wilczek and his daughter, Mira. Dyson and Wilczek, Seniors, both taught at the IAS. Frank himself has won accolades for his quantum work, including his work on time crystals and asymptotic freedom, just to name some of is major contributions to science.

And I remember, when Frank was getting involved with Princeton, they gave him Einstein's house – See my pictures of this. Actually, he made the Einstein House a condition for his move, and the school acquiesced. You can find out more about that here. That iconic building at 112 Mercer Street holds sentimental value for a lot of us, and sort of represents parts of the legacies of both scientists. Because Einstein had forbid people to turn it into a museum after his death, it made sense, and as the tour guides point out, Einstein loved children, too, so it was fun to think of Amity and Mira spending parts of their childhoods there.

It’s all very interesting from a legacy perspective, and worth taking some time to learn about all of these influential figures. Mira tells me she got into MIT first as an Undergrad and then her Dad moved over to MIT as a Faculty.

And look out for an up-and-coming generation of award winners who will be building on the integral work done by prior greats! We are in a fascinating age, the age of AI, and quantum, and there are so many possibilities for young scientists to distinguish themselves! I’ll be writing more about it as we put on events, attend lectures and conferences, and work together to address the needs of the present time.