Leslie Valiant

Leslie Valiant

Leslie Valiant in 2005 (photo from MFO)
Born 28 March 1949 (1949-03-28) (age 62)
Nationality United Kingdom
Fields Mathematics
Computer Science
Institutions Harvard University
Alma mater University of Cambridge
Imperial College London
University of Warwick
Doctoral advisor Mike Paterson
Doctoral students Mark Jerrum
Michael Kearns
Dan Roth
Rocco Servedio
Known for Valiant–Vazirani theorem
Notable awards Turing Award (2010)
EATCS Award (2008)
Knuth Prize (1997)
Nevanlinna Prize (1986)

Leslie Gabriel Valiant (born 28 March 1949) is a British computer scientist and computational theorist[1].

He was educated at King's College, Cambridge, Imperial College London, and University of Warwick where he received his Ph.D. in computer science in 1974. He started teaching at Harvard University in 1982 and is currently the T. Jefferson Coolidge Professor of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics in the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Prior to 1982 he taught at Carnegie Mellon University, Leeds University, and the University of Edinburgh.

Valiant is world-renowned for his work in theoretical computer science. Among his many contributions to complexity theory, he introduced the notion of #P-completeness to explain why enumeration and reliability problems are intractable. He also introduced the "probably approximately correct" (PAC) model of machine learning that has helped the field of computational learning theory grow, and the concept of holographic algorithms. His earlier work in automata theory includes an algorithm for context-free parsing, which is (as of 2010) still the asymptotically fastest known. He also works in computational neuroscience focusing on understanding memory and learning.

He received the Nevanlinna Prize in 1986, the Knuth Prize in 1997, the EATCS Award in 2008,[2] and the ACM Turing Award in 2010.[3][4] He is a Fellow of the Royal Society (London), a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences (USA).

One of his significant research papers was proving, along with Vijay Vazirani, UNIQUE-SAT ∈ P ⇒ NP = RP (Valiant–Vazirani theorem).[5]

References

  1. ^ Hoffmann, L. (2011). "Q&A: Leslie Valiant discusses machine learning, parallel computing, and computational neuroscience". Communications of the ACM 54 (6): 128. doi:10.1145/1953122.1953152.  edit
  2. ^ David Peleg The EATCS Award 2008 - Laudatio for Professor Leslie Valiant European Association of Theoretical Computer Science.
  3. ^ Josh Fishman "‘Probably Approximately Correct’ Inventor, From Harvard U., Wins Turing Award" Chronicle of Higher Education March 9, 2011.
  4. ^ ACM Turing Award Goes to Innovator in Machine Learning ACM Computing News
  5. ^ Valiant, L.; Vazirani, V. (1986). "NP is as easy as detecting unique solutions". Theoretical Computer Science 47: 85–93. doi:10.1016/0304-3975(86)90135-0. http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/fall05/cos528/handouts/NP_is_as.pdf.  edit

External links

Alan Perlis (1966) · Maurice Vincent Wilkes (1967) · Richard Hamming (1968) · Marvin Minsky (1969) · James H. Wilkinson (1970) · John McCarthy (1971) · Edsger W. Dijkstra (1972) · Charles Bachman (1973) · Donald Knuth (1974) · Allen Newell / Herbert Simon (1975) · Michael O. Rabin / Dana Scott (1976) · John Backus (1977) · Robert W. Floyd (1978) · Kenneth E. Iverson (1979) · Tony Hoare (1980) · Edgar F. Codd (1981) · Stephen Cook (1982) · Ken Thompson / Dennis Ritchie (1983) · Niklaus Wirth (1984) · Richard Karp (1985) · John Hopcroft / Robert Tarjan (1986) · John Cocke (1987) · Ivan Sutherland (1988) · William Kahan (1989) · Fernando J. Corbató (1990) · Robin Milner (1991) · Butler Lampson (1992) · Juris Hartmanis / Richard Stearns (1993) · Edward Feigenbaum / Raj Reddy (1994) · Manuel Blum (1995) · Amir Pnueli (1996) · Douglas Engelbart (1997) · Jim Gray (1998) · Fred Brooks (1999) · Andrew Yao (2000) · Ole-Johan Dahl / Kristen Nygaard (2001) · Ron Rivest / Adi Shamir / Leonard Adleman (2002) · Alan Kay (2003) · Vint Cerf / Bob Kahn (2004) · Peter Naur (2005) · Frances E. Allen (2006) · Edmund M. Clarke / E. Allen Emerson / Joseph Sifakis (2007) · Barbara Liskov (2008) · Charles P. Thacker (2009) · Leslie G. Valiant (2010)
EATCS Award laureates

Karp (2000) · Böhm (2001) · Nivat (2002) · Rozenberg (2003) · Salomaa (2004) · Milner (2005) · Paterson (2006) · Scott (2007) · Valiant (2008) · Huet (2009) · Mehlhorn (2010) · Trakhtenbrot (2011)
Knuth Prize laureates

Yao (1996) · Valiant (1997) · Lovász (1999) · Ullman (2000) · Papadimitriou (2002) · Ajtai (2003) · Yannakakis (2005) · Lynch (2007) · Strassen (2008) · Johnson (2010) · Kannan (2011)

Tarjan (1982) · Valiant (1986) · Razborov (1990) · Wigderson (1994) · Shor (1998) · Sudan (2002) · Kleinberg (2006) · Spielman (2010)

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