Gödel Prize

Nominations are now open for the 2024 Gödel Prize. The nomination deadline is April 12, 2024.

About the Prize

The Gödel Prize for outstanding papers in the area of theoretical computer science is sponsored jointly by the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS) and the Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM SIGACT). This award is presented annually, with the presentation taking place alternately at the EATCS International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP) and the ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC). The 32nd Gödel Prize will be awarded at the 51st International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming (ICALP) in Tallinn, Estonia, July 8-12, 2024.

The Prize is named in honor of Kurt Gödel in recognition of his major contributions to mathematical logic and of his interest, discovered in a letter he wrote to John von Neumann shortly before von Neumann’s death, in what has become the famous “P versus NP” question. The Prize includes an award of USD 5,000.

Award Committee

The 2024 Award Committee consists of Mikołaj Bojańczyk (University of Warsaw), Irit Dinur (Weizmann Institute), Yuval Ishai (Technion), Anca Muscholl (University of Bordeaux, chair), Tim Roughgarden (Columbia University), and Luca Trevisan (Bocconi University).

Eligibility

Eligibility: The 2024 Prize rules are given below and they supersede any different interpretation of the generic rule to be found on websites of both SIGACT and EATCS. Any research paper or series of papers by a single author or by a team of authors is deemed eligible if:

The main results were not published (in either preliminary or final form) in a journal or conference proceedings before January 1st, 2011.
The paper was published in a recognized refereed journal no later than December 31, 2023.

The research work nominated for the award should be in the area of theoretical computer science. Nominations are encouraged from the broadest spectrum of the theoretical computer science community so as to ensure that potential award winning papers are not overlooked. The Award Committee shall have the ultimate authority to decide whether a particular paper is eligible for the Prize.

Nominations

Nominations for the award should be submitted by email to the Award Committee Chair: anca.muscholl@u-bordeaux.fr. Please make sure that the Subject line of all nominations and related messages begin with “Goedel Prize 2024”. To be considered, nominations for the 2024 Prize must be received by April 12, 2024.

A nomination package should include:

A printable copy (or copies) of the journal paper(s) being nominated, together with a complete citation (or citations) thereof.
A statement of the date(s) and venue(s) of the first conference or workshop publication(s) of the nominated work(s) or a statement that no such publication has occurred.
A brief summary of the technical content of the paper(s) and a brief explanation of its significance.
A support letter or letters signed by at least two members of the scientific community.

Additional support letters may also be received and are generally useful. The nominated paper(s) may be in any language. However, if a nominated publication is not in English, the nomination package must include an extended summary written in English.

Those intending to submit a nomination should contact the Award Committee Chair by email well in advance. The Chair will answer questions about eligibility, encourage coordination among different nominators for the same paper(s), and also accept informal proposals of potential nominees or tentative offers to prepare formal nominations. The committee maintains a database of past nominations for eligible papers, but fresh nominations for the same papers (especially if they highlight new evidence of impact) are always welcome.

Selection Process

The Award Committee is free to use any other sources of information in addition to the ones mentioned above. It may split the award among multiple papers, or declare no winner at all. All matters relating to the selection process left unspecified in this document are left to the discretion of the Award Committee.

Winners

2023: Samuel Fiorini, Serge Massar, Sebastian Pokutta, Hans Raj Tiwary, Ronald de Wolf, and Thomas Rothvoss
2022: Zvika Brakerski, Craig Gentry, Vinod Vaikuntanathan
2021: Andrei Bulatov, Martin E. Dyer, David Richerby, Jin-Yi Cai, and Xi Chen
2020: Robin A. Moser and Gábor Tardos
2019: Irit Dinur
2018: Oded Regev
2017: Cynthia Dwork, Frank McSherry, Kobbi Nissim, and Adam Smith
2016: Stephen Brookes and Peter W. O’Hearn
2015: Daniel A. Spielman and Shang-Hua Teng
2014: Ronald Fagin, Amnon Lotem, and Moni Naor
2013: Antoine Joux, Dan Boneh, and Matthew K. Franklin
2012: Elias Koutsoupias, Christos H. Papadimitriou, Tim Roughgarden, Éva Tardos, Noam Nisan, and Amir Ronen
2011: Johan T. Håstad
2010: Sanjeev Arora and Joseph S. B. Mitchell
2009: Omer Reingold, Salil Vadhan, and Avi Wigderson
2008: Dan Spielman and Shang-Hua Teng
2007: Alexander A. Razborov and Steven Rudich
2006: Manindra Agrawal, Neeraj Kayal, and Nitin Saxena
2005: Noga Alon, Yossi Matias and Mario Szegedy
2004: Maurice Herlihy and Nir Shavit / Michael Saks and Fotios Zaharoglou
2003: Yoav Freund and Robert Schapire
2002: Géraud Sénizergues
2001: Sanjeev Arora, Uriel Feige, Shafi Goldwasser, Carsten Lund, László Lovász, Rajeev Motwani, Shmuel Safra, Madhu Sudan, and Mario Szegedy
2000: Moshe Vardi and Pierre Wolper
1999: Peter W. Shor
1998: Seinosuke Toda
1997: Joseph Halpern and Yoram Moses
1996: Mark Jerrum and Alistair Sinclair
1995: Neil Immerman and Róbert Szelepcsényi
1994: Johan Håstad
1993: László Babai, Shafi Goldwasser, Silvio Micali, Shlomo Moran, and Charles Rackoff