Turing Award

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". Template:As of, 79 people have been awarded the prize, with the most recent recipients being Andrew Barto and Richard S. Sutton, who won in 2024.

The award is named after Alan Turing, also referred as "Father of Computer Science", 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 Template:US$, with financial support provided by Intel and Google. Since 2014, the award has been accompanied by a prize of Template:US$ 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).

Photo of The Turing Award on display at Nokia Bell Labs, August 2025.

The Turing Award of 1983, given to Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson, on display at Nokia Bell Labs.

Recipients

Recipients of the ACM Turing award

Year	Recipient(s)	Photo	Rationale	Affiliated institute(s)
1966	Template:Sortname	File:No image.svg	"For his influence in the area of advanced computer programming techniques and compiler construction"	Carnegie Mellon University
1967	Template:Sortname	Maurice Wilkes	For contributions including being "the builder and designer of the EDSAC, the second computer with an internally stored program" and introducing program libraries (together with David Wheeler and Stanley Gill)	University of Cambridge
1968	Template:Sortname	File:No image.svg	"For his work on numerical methods, automatic coding systems, and error-detecting and error-correcting codes"	University of Louisville Bell Labs
1969	Template:Sortname	Marvin Minsky	"For his central role in creating, shaping, promoting, and advancing the field of artificial intelligence"	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1970	Template:Sortname	File:No image.svg	"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	Template:Sortname	John McCarthy	Award citation refers to McCarthy's lecture "The Present State of Research on Artificial Intelligence"	Stanford University
1972	Template:Sortname	Edsger W. Dijkstra	"For fundamental contributions to programming as a high, intellectual challenge; for eloquent insistence and practical demonstration that programs should be composed correctly, not just debugged into correctness; for illuminating perception of problems at the foundations of program design"	Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica Eindhoven University of Technology University of Texas at Austin
1973	Template:Sortname	Charles Bachman	"For his outstanding contributions to database technology"	General Electric Research Laboratory (now under Groupe Bull, an Atos company)
1974	Template:Sortname	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	Template:Sortname	File:No image.svg	In collaboration with J. C. Shaw and others, for "basic contributions to artificial intelligence, the psychology of human cognition, and list processing."	RAND Corporation Carnegie Mellon University
	Template:Sortname	Herbert A. Simon
1976	Template:Sortname	Michael O. Rabin	"For their joint paper 'Finite Automata and Their Decision Problem', which introduced the idea of nondeterministic machines"	Princeton University
	Template:Sortname	Dana Scott		University of Chicago
1977	Template:Sortname	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	Template:Sortname	File:No image.svg	"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	Template:Sortname	File:No image.svg	"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	Template:Sortname	Tony Hoare	"For his fundamental contributions to the definition and design of programming languages"	Queen's University Belfast University of Oxford
1981	Template:Sortname	File:No image.svg	"For his fundamental and continuing contributions to the theory and practice of database management systems"	IBM
1982	Template:Sortname	Stephen Cook	For "his advancement of our understanding of the complexity of computation in a significant and profound way"; the citation in particular mentions his paper "The Complexity of Theorem Proving Procedures," which is credited with founding the theory of NP-completeness	University of Toronto
1983	Template:Sortname	Dennis Ritchie	"For their development of generic operating systems theory and specifically for the implementation of the UNIX operating system"	Bell Labs
	Template:Sortname	Ken Thompson
1984	Template:Sortname	Niklaus Wirth	"For developing a sequence of innovative computer languages, EULER, ALGOL-W, MODULA and PASCAL"	Stanford University University of Zurich ETH Zurich
1985	Template:Sortname	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	Template:Sortname	John Hopcroft	"For fundamental achievements in the design and analysis of algorithms and data structures"	Cornell University
	Template:Sortname	Robert Tarjan		Stanford University Cornell University University of California, Berkeley Princeton University
1987	Template:Sortname	File:No image.svg	"For significant contributions in the design and theory of compilers, the architecture of large systems and the development of reduced instruction set computers (RISC); for discovering and systematizing many fundamental transformations now used in optimizing compilers including reduction of operator strength, elimination of common subexpressions, register allocation, constant propagation, and dead code elimination"	IBM
1988	Template:Sortname	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	Template:Sortname	William Kahan	"For his fundamental contributions to numerical analysis" and as "one of the foremost experts on floating-point computations"	University of California, Berkeley
1990	Template:Sortname	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	Template:Sortname	File:No image.svg	The award citation mentions three primary contributions: his mechanization of the Logic of Computable Functions; the programming language ML including its type inference and type safety; the calculus of communicating systems; as well as the connection between operational and denotational semantics	Stanford University University of Edinburgh
1992	Template:Sortname	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	Template:Sortname	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)
	Template:Sortname	Richard E. Stearns
1994	Template:Sortname	Edward A. 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
	Template:Sortname	Raj Reddy		Stanford University Carnegie Mellon University
1995	Template:Sortname	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	Template:Sortname	Amir Pnueli	"For seminal work introducing temporal logic into computing science and for outstanding contributions to program and system verification"	Stanford University Tel Aviv University Weizmann Institute of Science Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
1997	Template:Sortname	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	Template:Sortname	Jim Gray	"For seminal contributions to database and transaction processing research and technical leadership in system implementation"	IBM Microsoft
1999	Template:Sortname	Fred Brooks	"For landmark contributions to computer architecture, operating systems, and software engineering"	IBM University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
2000	Template:Sortname	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	Template:Sortname	File:No image.svg	"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
	Template:Sortname	Kristen Nygaard
2002	Template:Sortname	Leonard Adleman	"For their ingenious contribution for making public-key cryptography useful in practice"	University of Southern California
	Template:Sortname	Ron Rivest		Massachusetts Institute of Technology
	Template:Sortname	Adi Shamir
2003	Template:Sortname	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	Template:Sortname	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
	Template:Sortname	Bob Kahn		Massachusetts Institute of Technology Bolt Beranek and Newman DARPA CNRI
2005	Template:Sortname	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	Template:Sortname	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	Template:Sortname	Edmund M. Clarke	"For their role in developing Model-Checking into a highly effective verification technology that is widely adopted in the hardware and software industries"	Harvard University Carnegie Mellon University
	Template:Sortname	E. Allen Emerson		Harvard University University of Texas at Austin
	Template:Sortname	Joseph Sifakis		French National Centre for Scientific Research
2008	Template:Sortname	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	Template:Sortname	Charles P. Thacker	"For the pioneering design and realization of the first modern personal computer — the Alto at Xerox PARC — and seminal inventions and contributions to local area networks (including the Ethernet), multiprocessor workstations, snooping cache coherence protocols, and tablet personal computers"	PARC DEC Microsoft Research
2010	Template:Sortname	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	Template:Sortname	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	Template:Sortname	Shafi Goldwasser	"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 Weizmann Institute of Science
	Template:Sortname	Silvio Micali		Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2013	Template:Sortname	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	Template:Sortname	Michael Stonebraker	"For fundamental contributions to the concepts and practices underlying modern database systems"	University of California, Berkeley Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2015	Template:Sortname	Whitfield Diffie	"For inventing and promulgating both asymmetric public-key cryptography, including its application to digital signatures, and a practical cryptographic key-exchange method	Stanford University
	Template:Sortname	Martin Hellman
2016	Template:Sortname	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	Template:Sortname	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
	Template:Sortname	David Patterson		University of California, Berkeley
2018	Template:Sortname	Yoshua Bengio	"For conceptual and engineering breakthroughs that have made deep neural networks a critical component of computing"	, McGill University, Mila
	Template:Sortname	Geoffrey Hinton		University of Toronto University of California, San Diego Carnegie Mellon University University College London University of Edinburgh Google AI
	Template:Sortname	Yann LeCun		University of Toronto Bell Labs Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University Meta AI
2019	Template:Sortname	Edwin Catmull	"For fundamental contributions to 3D computer graphics, and the impact of computer-generated imagery (CGI) in filmmaking and other applications"	University of Utah Pixar Walt Disney Animation Studios
	Template:Sortname	Pat Hanrahan		Pixar Princeton University Stanford University
2020	Template:Sortname	File:No image.svg	"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
	Template:Sortname	File:No image.svg		Bell Labs Princeton University Stanford University
2021	Template:Sortname	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	Template:Sortname	Robert Metcalfe	"For the invention, standardization, and commercialization of Ethernet"	Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Xerox PARC, University of Texas at Austin
2023	Template:Sortname	Avi Wigderson	"For foundational contributions to the theory of computation, including reshaping our understanding of the role of randomness in computation and mathematics, and for his decades of intellectual leadership in theoretical computer science"	Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
2024	Template:Sortname	File:No image.svg	"For developing the conceptual and algorithmic foundations of reinforcement learning"	University of Massachusetts Amherst
	Template:Sortname	Richard S. Sutton		University of Alberta Amii

External links

• ACM Chronological listing of Turing Laureates
• ACM A.M. Turing Award Centenary Celebration
• ACM A.M. Turing Award Laureate Interviews
• Celebration of 50 Years of the ACM A.M. Turing Award