1. Leslie Valiant
“truly a heroic figure in theoretical computer science”- ACM Turing Award Committee
Nafe Alsawfta
CSCE 221 Spring 2014

2. A somewhat typical life…
Born on March 28, 1949 (age 65)
Attend Latymer Upper School in London
King’s College, Cambridge B.A. in Mathematics
Imperial College, London, studied Theoretical C.S.
University of Warwick Ph.D. Computer Science (1974)
Appointed Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at Harvard (1982)
Named T Jefferson Coolidge Professor of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics Harvard (2001)
In 1977 he married Gayle Lynne Dyckhoff; they had two sons Gregory John Valiant and Paul A Valiant
Picture of him in 1986, 37 years old

3. And they said theoretical Computer Science was hard
Probably approximately correct (PAC)?
A model that supplied the foundation for learning #P
“how many” vs “are there any”
Holographic Algorithms
What does that even mean?
Parallel and distributed computing
“Bulk synchronous parallel” (BSP)
PAC most influential thing ever!!! In computational theory. Talk about each part, prepare notes in advance!
 His earlier work in automata theory includes an algorithm for context-free parsing, which is (as of 2010) still the asymptotically fastest known. He also works in computational neuroscience focusing on understanding memory and learning.

4. The basis for his work “Characterizing the power of computation”
“Characterizing a semantics for cognitive computation”
“Characterizing cortical computation”
Characterizing the power of computation, i.e., to fully characterize what can be computed in practice in the physical world.
Characterizing a semantics for cognitive computation, i.e., to seek out a semantics or description of knowledge that can computationally support the basic phenomena of intelligent behavior.
Characterizing cortical computation, i.e., to describe how knowledge is represented in the brain and to determine the algorithms that are used for computing the most basic behavioral tasks.
“Time and again, Valiant's work has literally defined or transformed the computer science research landscape.”- ACM Turing Award Committee

5. Award-drobe Nevanlinna Prize (1986) Knuth Prize (1997)
EATCS Award (2008)
ACM Turing Award (2010)
Fellow of Royal Society (London) (1991)
Fellow of The American Association for Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Member of The National Academy of Sciences (USA) (2001)

6. Overwhelming Impact
“For transformative contributions to the theory of computation, including the theory of probably approximately correct (PAC) learning, the complexity of enumeration and of algebraic computation, and the theory of parallel and distributed computing.”-ACM Turing Award Committee 2010

7. Sources http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Valiant