Leonid Levin

Updated: 05/02/2021 by Computer Hope
Leonid Levin

Name: Leonid Anatolievich Levin

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

Computer-related contributions

  • 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).