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Chris Papadimitriou is a Greek theoretical computer scientist, and professor of Computer Science at the University of California, since 1996.
He was born on August 16, 1949 in Athens. His parents come from two small towns in Arcadia, in Peloponnese.
He studied at the National Technical University of Athens, where in 1972 he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Electrical Engineering. He continued to study at Princeton University, where he received his MS in Electrical Engineering in 1974 and his PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 1976.
Papadimitriou has taught at Harvard, MIT, the National Technical University of Athens, Stanford, and UCSD, and is currently the C. Lester Hogan Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at U.C. Berkeley.
In 2001, he was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery. He became fellow of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering for contributions to complexity theory, database theory, and combinatorial optimization. In 2009 he was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences. Papadimitriou was awarded the IEEE John von Neumann Medal in 2016, the EATCS Award in 2015, the Gödel Prize in 2012 and the Knuth Prize in 2002.
During his time at Harvard University (1976-1978), he was academic advisor and research supervisor of Bill Gates. Their research essay in 1979, “Bounds for Sorting by Prefix Reversal” marked the beginning of a lasting friendship between Christos Papadimitriou and Bill Gates.
During his rich academic career, he has taught a variety of courses at undergraduate and postgraduate level in a wide range of scopes/objects from Computer Science such as: Algorithms and Complexity, Theory of Computation, Complexity Theory, Programming, Programming Languages, Data Structures, Compilers, Operating Systems, Databases, Artificial Intelligence, Software Engineering, Operations Research, Combinatorial, Combinatorial Algorithms, Combinatorial Optimization and Algorithmic Game Theory, Internet and Reading the Classical.
Some of these courses were introduced and taught for the first time by himself to Greece in 1982, in The School of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA).
He has published hundreds of research essays and most of his authored books, like “Elements of the Theory of Computation”, “Combinational Optimization” and “Computational Complexity”, have been translated into various languages.
His research work extends beyond his fundamental work on Algorithms and Complexity, in other scientific fields, such as Mathematics, Game Theory, Biology, Operations Research, and recently Neuroscience.
Christos Papadimitriou is also known for his books, such as: “Turing”, “Independence”, “Life Sentence to Hackers?” and he is the co-creator of the very successful graphic novel, “Logicomix”.
In an Internet post referring to one of his speeches on the Greek crisis, Dr. Papadimitriou highlights his theory that there’s nothing more violent than corruption. In the same speech, he goes on reflecting that, “Counted in financial terms, corruption in the Greek political system equals the death of 16.000. Estimating the investment value of a human life at €3.5 million, one can easily come to the conclusion that the moderately calculated total of €60 billion of public money that was lost during the last thirty-year period by excessive spending and embezzlement practices, that is 20% of the national debt, corresponds to the cost of death of 16.000 people. In other words, the average Greek will die two months earlier than expected, only because they looted their fair share of millions of money. In any case, robbing population does not constitute a non-violent crime.”
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Dr. Chris Papadimitriou was born in 1949 in Athens. After receiving his B.S. in Electronic Engineering from Athens Polytechnic, he travelled to the US, where he has been teaching computer science at Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley and the MIT since 1976. Moreover, he’s the C. Lester Hogan Professor of EECS at UC Berkeley, Chairman of the Computer Science Department and also holds honorary doctorates from ETH Zurich University since 1997.
Papadimitriou is internationally recognized as a leading expert in computer science and he has been awarded prizes for research excellence. He has published hundreds of research essays and most of his authored books, like Elements of the Theory of Computation, Combinational Optimization and Computational Complexity, have been translated into various languages. Turing is the title of his first novel.
Christos lives permanently in Berkeley, California, but his wife and his daughter Isabelle live in Greece. His life’s all about digits. However, he’s also writing a graphic novel and, as a real piano lover, he plays the keyboards in the Lady X & the Positive Eigenvalues rock band.
In an Internet post referring to one of his speeches on the Greek crisis, Dr. Papadimitriou highlights his theory that there’s nothing more violent than corruption. In the same speech, he goes on reflecting that, “Counted in financial terms, corruption in the Greek political system equals the death of 16.000. Estimating the investment value of a human life at €3.5 million, one can easily come to the conclusion that the moderately calculated total of €60 billion of public money that was lost during the last thirty-year period by excessive spending and embezzlement practices, that is 20% of the national debt, corresponds to the cost of death of 16.000 people. In other words, the average Greek will die two months earlier than expected, only because they looted their fair share of millions of money. In any case, robbing population does not constitute a non-violent crime.”
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