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Gödel Prize

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Portrait of Kurt Gödel, a famous logician, during his student years in Vienna.

The Gödel Prize is an annual prize for excellent work in theoretical computer science. It is given each year by two groups: the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS) and the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computational Theory (ACM SIGACT). The prize is named after Kurt Gödel, a famous mathematician who helped shape this area of study.

Gödel’s work touches on important questions in theoretical computer science. He was the first to ask the “P versus NP” question. In a letter in 1956 to John von Neumann, Gödel wondered if a hard problem could be solved quickly. This question is still unsolved today and remains very important in computer science.

Kurt Gödel

The Gödel Prize has been given out since 1993. It is awarded in even years at ICALP, a big conference in Europe, and in odd years at STOC, a major North American conference. To qualify, a paper must have been published in a journal in the past 14 years. The prize includes a reward of US$5000. A group of six people, chosen by the EATCS President and the SIGACT Chair, picks the winner.

Unlike the Gödel Prize, which honors specific papers, the Knuth Prize is given to people for their overall contributions to theoretical computer science.

Recipients

The Gödel Prize is given each year for great work in theoretical computer science. Two groups give the prize: the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS) and the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computational Theory (ACM SIGACT). The prize is named after Kurt Gödel, a famous mathematician. He asked an important question in computer science called "P versus NP" in a letter in 1956.

YearName(s)Publication year
1993László Babai, Shafi Goldwasser, Silvio Micali, Shlomo Moran, and Charles Rackoff1988, 1989
1994Johan Håstad1989
1995Neil Immerman and Róbert Szelepcsényi1988, 1988
1996Mark Jerrum and Alistair Sinclair1989, 1989
1997Joseph Halpern and Yoram Moses1990
1998Seinosuke Toda1991
1999Peter Shor1997
2000Moshe Y. Vardi and Pierre Wolper1994
2001Sanjeev Arora, Uriel Feige, Shafi Goldwasser, Carsten Lund, László Lovász, Rajeev Motwani, Shmuel Safra, Madhu Sudan, and Mario Szegedy1996, 1998, 1998
2002Géraud Sénizergues2001
2003Yoav Freund and Robert Schapire1997
2004Maurice Herlihy, Michael Saks, Nir Shavit and Fotios Zaharoglou1999, 2000
2005Noga Alon, Yossi Matias and Mario Szegedy1999
2006Manindra Agrawal, Neeraj Kayal, Nitin Saxena2004
2007Alexander Razborov, Steven Rudich1997
2008Daniel Spielman, Shang-Hua Teng2004
2009Omer Reingold, Salil Vadhan, Avi Wigderson2002, 2008
2010Sanjeev Arora, Joseph S. B. Mitchell1998, 1999
2011Johan Håstad2001
2012Elias Koutsoupias, Christos Papadimitriou, Noam Nisan, Amir Ronen, Tim Roughgarden and Éva Tardos2009, 2002, 2001
2013Dan Boneh, Matthew K. Franklin, and Antoine Joux2003,
2004
2014Ronald Fagin, Amnon Lotem, and Moni Naor2003,
2015Daniel Spielman, Shang-Hua Teng
2011 2013 2014
2016Stephen Brookes and Peter W. O'Hearn2007, 2007
2017Cynthia Dwork, Frank McSherry, Kobbi Nissim, and Adam D. Smith2006
2018Oded Regev2009
2019Irit Dinur2007
2020Robin Moser and Gábor Tardos2010
2021Andrei Bulatov, Jin-Yi Cai, Xi Chen, Martin Dyer, and David Richerby2013 2013 2017
2022Zvika Brakerski, Craig Gentry, and Vinod Vaikuntanathan2014, 2014
2023Samuel Fiorini, Serge Massar, and Sebastian Pokutta, Hans Raj Tiwary, Ronald de Wolf, and Thomas Rothvoss2015, 2017
2024Ryan Williams2011
2025Eshan Chattopadhyay and David Zuckerman2016

Winning papers

The Gödel Prize is a big award given each year for great work in theoretical computer science. It is given by two groups: the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS) and the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computational Theory (ACM SIGACT). The prize is named after Kurt Gödel, a famous mathematician who first talked about the "P versus NP" problem in a letter in 1956. This problem is one of the big questions in computer science today.

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