László Babai (called Laci by friends and colleagues), born in 1950, is a professor of mathematics and computer science at the University of Chicago. His research focuses on computational complexity theory, algorithms, combinatorics, and finite groups, with an emphasis on the interactions between these fields. He is the author of over 150 academic papers.

His notable accomplishments include the introduction of interactive proofs (see ^*).

He received his doctorate from Eötvös University in Hungary in 1975.

He is editor-in-chief of the refereed online journal Theory of Computing.

Babai was also involved in the creation of the Budapest Semesters in Mathematics program and first coined the name.

Honors

• Gödel Prize for outstanding papers in the area of theoretical computer science (1993)
• Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (June 2005).

Quotes

• If you do not understand logarithms, you are doomed in Algorithms ^*. But since this class prepares you for Algorithms, you are doomed now!

"And there is a really nice one-line proof of this... lines later And so we see that it is not a one-line proof, but if my lines had been shorter..." (Spring Algorithms class '06)

External links

• Personal website
• Theoretical Computer Science Genealogy entry
• Mathematics Genealogy Project entry

20th century mathematicians | 21st century mathematicians | Hungarian mathematicians | Erdős number 1 | University of Chicago faculty | Gödel Prize laureates

Babai László