Dr. Allan Borodin: Recipient of the 2008 CRM-Fields-PIMS Prize

The Centre de recherches mathématiques (CRM), the Fields Institute, and the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences are pleased to announce that Professor Allan Borodin of the University of Toronto is the recipient of the 2008 CRM-Fields-PIMS Prize, in recognition of his exceptional achievement.

Professor Borodin is a world leader in the mathematical foundations of computer science. His influence on theoretical computer science has been enormous, and its scope is very broad. Jon Kleinberg, winner of the 2006 Nevanlinna Prize, writes of Borodin, “he is one of the few researchers for whom one can cite examples of impact on nearly every area of theory, and his work is characterized by a profound taste in choice of problems, and deep connections with broader issues in computer science.” Allan Borodin has made fundamental contributions to many areas, including algebraic computations, resource tradeoffs, routing in interconnection networks, parallel algorithms, online algorithms, and adversarial queuing theory.

Professor Borodin received his B.A. in Mathematics from Rutgers University in 1963, his M.S. in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science in 1966 from Stevens Institute of Technology, and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cornell University in 1969. He was a systems programmer at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey from 1963-1966, and a Research Fellow at Cornell from 1966-1969. Since 1969 he has taught with the computer science department at the University of Toronto, becoming a full professor in 1977, and chair of the department from 1980-1985. Professor Borodin has been the editor of many journals including the SIAM Journal of Computing, Algorithmica, the Journal of Computer Algebra, the Journal of Computational Complexity, and the Journal of Applicable Algebra in Engineering, Communication and Computing. He has held positions on, or been active in, dozens of committees and organizations, both inside and outside the University, and has held several visiting professorships internationally. In 1991 Borodin was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

Previous recipients of the prize are H.S.M. (Donald) Coxeter, George A. Elliott, James Arthur, Robert V. Moody, Stephen A. Cook, Israel Michael Sigal, William T. Tutte, John B. Friedlander, John McKay, Edwin Perkins, Donald A. Dawson, David Boyd, Nicole Tomczak-Jaegermann and Joel Feldman.

Established in 1994, the CRM-Fields Prize recognizes exceptional research in the mathematical sciences. In 2005, PIMS became an equal partner in the prize, and the name was changed to the CRM-Fields-PIMS prize. A committee appointed by the three institutes chooses the recipient.