Liz Fuller-Wright, Office of Communications
March 17, 2021 4:55 p.m.
Avi Wigderson
Photo by Dan Komoda, Institute for Advanced Study
The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters has awarded the Abel Prize for 2021 to Avi Wigderson, a 1983 Ph.D. graduate of Princeton in electrical engineering and computer science, now on the faculty of the Institute for Advanced Study. He shares the prize with László Lovász of the Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics and Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary.
The award cites “their foundational contributions to theoretical computer science and discrete mathematics, and their leading role in shaping them into central fields of modern mathematics.”
“Including both ‘Electrical’ and ‘Computer’ in the title better reflects what our department does,” Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Niraj Jha noted.