Concept

Richard M. Karp

Summary
Richard Manning Karp (born January 3, 1935) is an American computer scientist and computational theorist at the University of California, Berkeley. He is most notable for his research in the theory of algorithms, for which he received a Turing Award in 1985, The Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science in 2004, and the Kyoto Prize in 2008. Karp was elected a member of the National 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. Born to parents Abraham and Rose Karp in Boston, Massachusetts, Karp has three younger siblings: Robert, David, and Carolyn. His family was Jewish, and he grew up in a small apartment, in a then mostly Jewish neighborhood of Dorchester in 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 attended Harvard University, where he received his bachelor's degree in 1955, his master's degree in 1956, and his Ph.D. in applied mathematics in 1959. He started working at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center. In 1968, he became professor of computer science, mathematics, and operations research at the University 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 the University of Washington, he has remained at Berkeley. From 1988 to 1995 and 1999 to the present he has also been a research scientist at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, where he currently leads the Algorithms Group. Richard Karp was awarded the National Medal of Science, and was the recipient of the Harvey Prize of the Technion and the 2004 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science for his insights into computational complexity.
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