Richard M. Karp

Richard Manning Karp
Richard Karp at the EPFL in 2009
Born	(1935-01-03)January 3, 1935 Boston, Massachusetts,US
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Harvard University
Known for	Aanderaa–Karp–Rosenberg conjecture Edmonds–Karp algorithm Held–Karp algorithm Hopcroft–Karp algorithm Karmarkar–Karp algorithm Rabin–Karp string search algorithm Karp–Lipton theorem Karp's 21 NP-complete problems Vector addition system
Awards	Fulkerson Prize(1979) Turing Award(1985) John von Neumann Theory Prize(1990) IEEE Computer Society Charles Babbage Award(1995) National Medal of Science(1996) Harvey Prize(1998) EATCS award(2000) Benjamin Franklin Medal(2004) Kyoto Prize(2008)
Scientific career
Fields	Computer Science
Institutions	University of California, Berkeley IBM
Thesis	Some Applications of Logical Syntax to Digital Computer Programming(1959)
Doctoral advisor	Anthony Oettinger
Doctoral students	Faith Ellen Sally Floyd Phillip Gibbons Dan Gusfield Narendra Karmarkar Valerie King Michael Luby Rajeev Motwani Noam Nisan Raymond Reiter Eunice Santos Thomas J. Schaefer Ron Shamir Barbara Simons Eric Xing Norman Zadeh

Richard Manning Karp(born January 3, 1935) is an Americancomputer scientistandcomputational theoristat theUniversity of California, Berkeley.He is most notable for his research in thetheory of algorithms,for which he received aTuring Awardin 1985,The Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science in 2004,and theKyoto Prizein 2008.

Karp was elected a member of theNational Academy of Engineering(1992) for major contributions to the theory and application of NP-completeness, constructing efficient combinatorial algorithms, and applying probabilistic methods in computer science.

Biography

Born to parents Abraham and Rose Karp inBoston, Massachusetts,Karp has three younger siblings: Robert,David,and Carolyn. His family wasJewish,and he grew up in a small apartment, in a then mostly Jewish neighborhood ofDorchesterin Boston.

Both his parents were Harvard graduates (his mother eventually obtaining her Harvard degree at age 57 after taking evening courses), while his father had had ambitions to go to medical school after Harvard, but became a mathematics teacher as he could not afford the medical school fees.He attendedHarvard University,where he received his bachelor's degree in 1955, his master's degree in 1956, and hisPh.D.inapplied mathematicsin 1959. He started working atIBM'sThomas J. Watson Research Center.

In 1968, he became professor of computer science, mathematics, and operations research at theUniversity of California, Berkeley.Karp was the first associate chair of the Computer Science Division within the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.Apart from a 4-year period as a professor at theUniversity of Washington,he has remained at Berkeley. From 1988 to 1995 and 1999 to the present he has also been a research scientist at theInternational Computer Science Institutein Berkeley, where he currently leads the Algorithms Group.

Richard Karp was awarded theNational Medal of Science,and was the recipient of theHarvey Prizeof theTechnionand the 2004Benjamin Franklin Medalin Computer and Cognitive Science for his insights intocomputational complexity.In 1994 he was inducted as aFellowof theAssociation for Computing Machinery.He was elected to the 2002 class ofFellowsof theInstitute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences.He is the recipient of several honorary degrees and a member of the U.S.National Academy of Sciences,theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences,and theAmerican Philosophical Society.

In 2012, Karp became the founding director of theSimons Institute for the Theory of Computingat theUniversity of California, Berkeley.

Work

Karp has made many important discoveries in computer science,combinatorial algorithms,andoperations research.His major current research interests includebioinformatics.

In 1962 he co-developed with Michael Held theHeld–Karp algorithm,anexactexponential-time algorithm for thetravelling salesman problem.

In 1971 he co-developed withJack EdmondstheEdmonds–Karp algorithmfor solving themaximum flow problemon networks, and in 1972 he published a landmark paper in complexity theory, "Reducibility Among Combinatorial Problems", in which he proved21 problems to be NP-complete.

In 1973 he andJohn Hopcroftpublished theHopcroft–Karp algorithm,the fastest known method for finding maximum cardinalitymatchingsinbipartite graphs.

In 1980, along withRichard J. Lipton,Karp proved theKarp–Lipton theorem(which proves that ifSATcan be solved byBoolean circuitswith a polynomial number oflogic gates,then thepolynomial hierarchycollapses to its second level).

In 1987 he co-developed withMichael O. RabintheRabin–Karp string search algorithm.

Turing Award

His citationfor the(1985)Turing Award was as follows:

For his continuing contributions to the theory of algorithms including the development of efficient algorithms for network flow and other combinatorial optimization problems, the identification of polynomial-time computability with the intuitive notion ofalgorithmic efficiency,and, most notably, contributions to the theory ofNP-completeness.Karp introduced the now standard methodology for proving problems to be NP-complete which has led to the identification of many theoretical and practical problems as being computationally difficult.

External links

• ACM Crossroads magazine interview/bio of Richard Karp
• Karp's Home Page at Berkeley
• Biography of Richard Karpfrom the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences