Congratulations to University of Toronto Computer Science professor Stephen Cook, best known for formulating the P v. NP problem, for winning the $1M 2012 Gerhard Herzberg medal!
After all these years, I still remember the thrill in taking my first year UT Comp. Sci class in 1987 with prof. Cook! And it remains an honour (and bragging right) to have taken the famous third year CSC364 Computability and Complexity class with prof. Cook and seeing him proved to us 3-satisfiability and taught us P v. NP, etc. I am truly excited for prof. Cook!
Check out my 15 minutes interview with Prof. Cook this morning: Interview with Dr. Stephen A. Cook, 2012 Winner of NSERC's $1m Herzberg Medal (audio)
By the way, as prof. cook mentioned in the interview, he came to the idea of the NP complete problem about 6 months after he came to Toronto in 1970. If you read the detailed & insightful oral history interview with Stephen Cook (courtesy of University of Minnesota), you will realize professor Cook could have easily stayed at UC Berkeley (if they had not denied him tenure) instead of joining us at University of Toronto! Lucky us!
Last week, I asked prof. Kelly Gotlieb "Father of Computing in Canada" for his thoughts about some giants in computer science, here is what Kelly has to say about Steve (video clip).
Here is "NSERC Presents 2 Minutes With Stephen Cook"(video)
Here is a great Q&A from U of Toronto.
Via this UT page, see more media coverage about the 2012 Herzberg Prize at these links: "- Globe & Mail - Canada.com - Calgary Herald - CBC News"
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