The ACM A. M. Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science. It is generally recognized as the highest distinction in the field of computer science and is often referred to as the "Nobel Prize of Computing".

The award is named after Alan Turing, who was a British mathematician and reader in mathematics at the University of Manchester. Turing is often credited as being the founder of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence, and a key contributor to the Allied cryptanalysis of the Enigma cipher during World War II.

From 2007 to 2013, the award was accompanied by a prize of US$250,000, with financial support provided by Intel and Google. Since 2014, the award has been accompanied by a prize of US$1 million, with financial support provided by Google.

The first recipient, in 1966, was Alan Perlis. The youngest recipient was Donald Knuth who won in 1974, at the age of 36, while the oldest recipient was Alfred Aho who won in 2020, at the age of 79. Only three women have been awarded the prize: Frances Allen (in 2006), Barbara Liskov (in 2008), and Shafi Goldwasser (in 2012). As of 2024, 77 people have been awarded the prize, with the most recent recipient, in 2023, being Avi Wigderson.

Recipients of the ACM Turing award

Year	Recipient(s)	Photo	Rationale	Affiliated institute(s)
1966	Alan Perlis	—	"For his influence in the area of advanced computer programming techniques and compiler construction"	Carnegie Mellon University
1967	Maurice Wilkes		"Wilkes is best known as the builder and designer of the EDSAC, the second computer with an internally stored program. Built in 1949, the EDSAC used a mercury delay line memory. He is also known as the author, with David Wheeler and Stanley Gill, of a volume on 'Preparation of Programs for Electronic Digital Computers' in 1951, in which program libraries were effectively introduced."	University of Cambridge
1968	Richard Hamming	—	"For his work on numerical methods, automatic coding systems, and error-detecting and error-correcting codes"	Bell Labs
1969	Marvin Minsky		"For his central role in creating, shaping, promoting, and advancing the field of artificial intelligence"	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1970	James H. Wilkinson	—	"For his research in numerical analysis to facilitate the use of the high-speed digital computer, having received special recognition for his work in computations in linear algebra and 'backward' error analysis"	National Physical Laboratory
1971	John McCarthy		"McCarthy's lecture 'The Present State of Research on Artificial Intelligence' is a topic that covers the area in which he has achieved considerable recognition for his work."	Stanford University
1972	Edsger W. Dijkstra		"Edsger Dijkstra was a principal contributor in the late 1950s to the development of the ALGOL, a high level programming language which has become a model of clarity and mathematical rigor. He is one of the principal proponents of the science and art of programming languages in general, and has greatly contributed to our understanding of their structure, representation, and implementation. His fifteen years of publications extend from theoretical articles on graph theory to basic manuals, expository texts, and philosophical contemplations in the field of programming languages."	Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica, Eindhoven University of Technology, University of Texas at Austin
1973	Charles Bachman		"For his outstanding contributions to database technology"	General Electric Research Laboratory (now under Groupe Bull, an Atos company)
1974	Donald Knuth		"For his major contributions to the analysis of algorithms and the design of programming languages, and in particular for his contributions to "The Art of Computer Programming" through his well-known books in a continuous series by this title"	California Institute of Technology, Center for Communications Research, Center for Communications and Computing, Institute for Defense Analyses, Stanford University
1975	Allen Newell	—	"In joint scientific efforts extending over twenty years, initially in collaboration with J. C. Shaw at the RAND Corporation, and subsequently with numerous faculty and student colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University, they have made basic contributions to artificial intelligence, the psychology of human cognition, and list processing."	RAND Corporation, Carnegie Mellon University
	Herbert A. Simon
1976	Michael O. Rabin		"For their joint paper 'Finite Automata and Their Decision Problem', which introduced the idea of nondeterministic machines, a continuous source of inspiration for subsequent work in this field"	Princeton University
	Dana Scott			University of Chicago
1977	John Backus		"For profound, influential, and lasting contributions to the design of practical high-level programming systems, notably through his work on FORTRAN, and for seminal publication of formal procedures for the specification of programming languages"	IBM
1978	Robert W. Floyd	—	"For having a clear influence on methodologies for the creation of efficient and reliable software, and for helping to found the following important subfields of computer science: the theory of parsing, the semantics of programming languages, automatic program verification, automatic program synthesis, and analysis of algorithms"	Carnegie Mellon University, Stanford University
1979	Kenneth E. Iverson	—	"For his pioneering effort in programming languages and mathematical notation resulting in what the computing field now knows as APL, for his contributions to the implementation of interactive systems, to educational uses of APL, and to programming language theory and practice"	IBM
1980	Tony Hoare		"For his fundamental contributions to the definition and design of programming languages"	Queen's University Belfast, University of Oxford
1981	Edgar F. Codd	—	"For his fundamental and continuing contributions to the theory and practice of database management systems, esp. relational databases"	IBM
1982	Stephen Cook		"For his advancement of our understanding of the complexity of computation in a significant and profound way"	University of Toronto
1983	Ken Thompson		"For their development of generic operating systems theory and specifically for the implementation of the UNIX operating system"	Bell Labs
	Dennis Ritchie
1984	Niklaus Wirth		"For developing a sequence of innovative computer languages, EULER, ALGOL-W, Pascal, MODULA and Oberon"	Stanford University, University of Zurich, ETH Zurich
1985	Richard M. Karp		"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 of algorithmic efficiency, and, most notably, contributions to the theory of NP-completeness"	University of California, Berkeley
1986	John Hopcroft		"For fundamental achievements in the design and analysis of algorithms and data structures"	Cornell University
	Robert Tarjan			Stanford University, Cornell University, University of California, Berkeley, Princeton University
1987	John Cocke	—	"For significant contributions in the design and theory of compilers, the architecture of large systems and the development of reduced instruction set computers (RISC)"	IBM
1988	Ivan Sutherland		"For his pioneering and visionary contributions to computer graphics, starting with Sketchpad, and continuing after"	Stanford University, Harvard University, University of Utah, California Institute of Technology
1989	William Kahan		"For his fundamental contributions to numerical analysis. One of the foremost experts on floating-point computations, Kahan has dedicated himself to 'making the world safe for numerical computations!'"	University of California, Berkeley
1990	Fernando J. Corbató		"For his pioneering work organizing the concepts and leading the development of the general-purpose, large-scale, time-sharing and resource-sharing computer systems, CTSS and Multics"	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1991	Robin Milner	—	"For three distinct and complete achievements: LCF, the mechanization of Scott's Logic of Computable Functions, probably the first theoretically based yet practical tool for machine assisted proof construction; ML, the first language to include polymorphic type inference together with a type-safe exception-handling mechanism; CCS, a general theory of concurrency In addition, he formulated and strongly advanced full abstraction, the study of the relationship between operational and denotational semantics."	Stanford University, University of Edinburgh
1992	Butler Lampson		"For contributions to the development of distributed, personal computing environments and the technology for their implementation: workstations, networks, operating systems, programming systems, displays, security and document publishing"	PARC, DEC
1993	Juris Hartmanis		"In recognition of their seminal paper which established the foundations for the field of computational complexity theory"	General Electric Research Laboratory (now under Groupe Bull, an Atos company)
	Richard E. Stearns
1994	Edward Feigenbaum		"For pioneering the design and construction of large scale artificial intelligence systems, demonstrating the practical importance and potential commercial impact of artificial intelligence technology"	Stanford University
	Raj Reddy			Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon University
1995	Manuel Blum		"In recognition of his contributions to the foundations of computational complexity theory and its application to cryptography and program checking"	University of California, Berkeley
1996	Amir Pnueli		"For seminal work introducing temporal logic into computing science and for outstanding contributions to program and systems verification"	Stanford University, Tel Aviv University, Weizmann Institute of Science, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
1997	Douglas Engelbart		"For an inspiring vision of the future of interactive computing and the invention of key technologies to help realize this vision"	SRI International, Tymshare, McDonnell Douglas, Bootstrap Institute/Alliance, The Doug Engelbart Institute
1998	Jim Gray		"For seminal contributions to database and transaction processing research and technical leadership in system implementation"	IBM, Microsoft
1999	Fred Brooks		"For landmark contributions to computer architecture, operating systems, and software engineering"	IBM, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
2000	Andrew Yao		"In recognition of his fundamental contributions to the theory of computation, including the complexity-based theory of pseudorandom number generation, cryptography, and communication complexity"	Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, Princeton University
2001	Ole-Johan Dahl	—	"For ideas fundamental to the emergence of object-oriented programming, through their design of the programming languages Simula I and Simula 67"	Norwegian Computing Center, University of Oslo
	Kristen Nygaard
2002	Ron Rivest		"For their ingenious contribution for making public-key cryptography useful in practice"	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
	Adi Shamir
	Leonard Adleman			University of Southern California
2003	Alan Kay		"For pioneering many of the ideas at the root of contemporary object-oriented programming languages, leading the team that developed Smalltalk, and for fundamental contributions to personal computing"	University of Utah, PARC, Stanford University, Atari, Apple ATG, Walt Disney Imagineering, Viewpoints Research Institute, HP Labs
2004	Vint Cerf		"For pioneering work on internetworking, including the design and implementation of the Internet's basic communications protocols, TCP/IP, and for inspired leadership in networking"	University of California, Los Angeles, Stanford University, DARPA, MCI (now under Verizon), CNRI, Google
	Bob Kahn			Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Bolt Beranek and Newman, DARPA, CNRI
2005	Peter Naur		"For fundamental contributions to programming language design and the definition of ALGOL 60, to compiler design, and to the art and practice of computer programming"	Regnecentralen (now under Fujitsu), University of Copenhagen
2006	Frances Allen		"For pioneering contributions to the theory and practice of optimizing compiler techniques that laid the foundation for modern optimizing compilers and automatic parallel execution"	IBM
2007	Edmund M. Clarke		"For their role in developing model checking into a highly effective verification technology, widely adopted in the hardware and software industries"	Harvard University, Carnegie Mellon University
	E. Allen Emerson			Harvard University, University of Texas at Austin
	Joseph Sifakis			French National Centre for Scientific Research
2008	Barbara Liskov		"For contributions to practical and theoretical foundations of programming language and system design, especially related to data abstraction, fault tolerance, and distributed computing"	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2009	Charles P. Thacker		"For his pioneering design and realization of the Xerox Alto, the first modern personal computer, and in addition for his contributions to the Ethernet and the Tablet PC"	PARC, DEC, Microsoft Research
2010	Leslie Valiant		"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"	Harvard University
2011	Judea Pearl		"For fundamental contributions to artificial intelligence through the development of a calculus for probabilistic and causal reasoning"	University of California, Los Angeles, New Jersey Institute of Technology
2012	Silvio Micali		"For transformative work that laid the complexity-theoretic foundations for the science of cryptography and in the process pioneered new methods for efficient verification of mathematical proofs in complexity theory"	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
	Shafi Goldwasser			Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Weizmann Institute of Science
2013	Leslie Lamport		"For fundamental contributions to the theory and practice of distributed and concurrent systems, notably the invention of concepts such as causality and logical clocks, safety and liveness, replicated state machines, and sequential consistency"	Massachusetts Computer Associates (now under Essig PLM), SRI International, DEC, Compaq (now under HP), Microsoft Research
2014	Michael Stonebraker		"For fundamental contributions to the concepts and practices underlying modern database systems"	University of California, Berkeley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2015	Whitfield Diffie		"For fundamental contributions to modern cryptography. Diffie and Hellman's groundbreaking 1976 paper, 'New Directions in Cryptography', introduced the ideas of public-key cryptography and digital signatures, which are the foundation for most regularly-used security protocols on the Internet today."	Stanford University
	Martin Hellman
2016	Tim Berners-Lee		"For inventing the World Wide Web, the first web browser, and the fundamental protocols and algorithms allowing the Web to scale"	CERN, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, World Wide Web Consortium
2017	John L. Hennessy		"For pioneering a systematic, quantitative approach to the design and evaluation of computer architectures with enduring impact on the microprocessor industry"	Stanford University
	David Patterson			University of California, Berkeley
2018	Yoshua Bengio		"For conceptual and engineering breakthroughs that have made deep neural networks a critical component of computing"	Université de Montréal, McGill University, Mila
	Geoffrey Hinton			University of Toronto, University of California, San Diego, Carnegie Mellon University, University College London, University of Edinburgh, Google AI
	Yann LeCun			University of Toronto, Bell Labs, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University, Meta AI
2019	Edwin Catmull		"For fundamental contributions to 3-D computer graphics, and the revolutionary impact of these techniques on computer-generated imagery (CGI) in filmmaking and other applications"	University of Utah, Pixar, Walt Disney Animation Studios
	Pat Hanrahan			Pixar, Princeton University, Stanford University
2020	Alfred Aho	—	"For fundamental algorithms and theory underlying programming language implementation and for synthesizing these results and those of others in their highly influential books, which educated generations of computer scientists"	Bell Labs, Columbia University
	Jeffrey Ullman	—		Bell Labs, Princeton University, Stanford University
2021	Jack Dongarra		"For pioneering contributions to numerical algorithms and libraries that enabled high performance computational software to keep pace with exponential hardware improvements for over four decades"	Argonne National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, University of Manchester, Texas A&M University Institute for Advanced Study, University of Tennessee, Rice University
2022	Robert Metcalfe		"For the invention, standardization, and commercialization of Ethernet"	Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Xerox PARC, University of Texas at Austin
2023	Avi Wigderson		"For reshaping our understanding of the role of randomness in computation, and for decades of intellectual leadership in theoretical computer science"	Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

• Akmut, Camille (June 12, 2018). "Social conditions of outstanding contributions to computer science : a prosopography of Turing Award laureates (1966-2016)". hal.science. Retrieved December 12, 2024.

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