The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Turing Award, often referred to as the "Nobel Prize of Computing," is given for major contributions of lasting importance to computing.
More than half of Turing awardees have been funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation at some point in their careers. NSF is proud to support the work of these awardees, whose work has greatly advanced science and society.
The Turing Award is named for Alan M. Turing, the British mathematician who articulated the mathematical foundation and limits of computing. Since 1966, the ACM has been awarded annually to individuals who have contributed lasting and major technical accomplishments to computing.
The awardees are listed below with an asterisk (*) next to those who have received NSF funding.
Awardees
2020 – present
*2024 - Andrew Barto
Year of first NSF award: 1984
Turing award citation: For developing the conceptual and algorithmic foundations of reinforcement learning.
Read more about Andrew Barto's accomplishments.
2024 - Richard Sutton
Turing Award citation: For developing the conceptual and algorithmic foundations of reinforcement learning.
Read more about Richard Sutton's accomplishments.
*2023 — Avi Wigderson
Year of first NSF award: 2000.
Turing Award citation: 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.
Read more about Avi Wigderson's accomplishments.
2022 — Robert M. Metcalfe
Turing Award citation: For the invention, standardization and commercialization of Ethernet.
No known NSF funding.
Read more about Robert M. Metcalfe's accomplishments.
*2021 — Jack J. Dongarra
Year of first NSF award: 1985.
Turing Award citation: For his pioneering contributions to numerical algorithms and libraries that enabled high-performance computational software to keep pace with exponential hardware improvements for over four decades.
Read more about Jack J. Dongarra's accomplishments.
*2020 — Alfred V. Aho
Year of first NSF award: 1996.
Turing Award citation: (Co-award with Jeffrey D. Ullman.) 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.
Read more about Alfred V. Aho's accomplishments.
*2020 — Jeffrey D. Ullman
Year of first NSF award: 1980.
Turing Award citation: (Co-award with Alfred V. 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.
Read more about Jeffrey D. Ullman's accomplishments.
2010 – 2019
2019 — Edwin E. Catmull
Turing Award citation: (Co-award with Patrick M. Hanrahan.) For fundamental contributions to 3D computer graphics and impact on computer-generated imagery in filmmaking and other applications.
No known NSF funding.
Read more about Edwin E. Catmull's accomplishments.
*2019 — Patrick M. Hanrahan
Year of first NSF award: 1994.
Turing Award citation: (Co-award with Edwin E. Catmull.) For fundamental contributions to 3D computer graphics and impact on computer-generated imagery in filmmaking and other applications.
Read more about Patrick M. Hanrahan's accomplishments.
2018 — Yoshua Bengio
Turing Award citation: (Co-award with Geoffrey E. Hinton and Yann LeCun.) For conceptual and engineering breakthroughs that have made deep neural networks a critical component of computing.
No known NSF funding.
Read more about Yoshua Bengio's accomplishments.
*2018 — Geoffrey E. Hinton
Year of first NSF award: 1989.
Turing Award citation: (Co-award with Yann LeCun and Yoshua Bengio.) For conceptual and engineering breakthroughs that have made deep neural networks a critical component of computing.
Read more about Geoffrey E. Hinton's accomplishments.
*2018 — Yann LeCun
Year of first NSF award: 1998.
Turing Award citation: (Co-award with Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey E. Hinton.) For conceptual and engineering breakthroughs that have made deep neural networks a critical component of computing.
Read more about Yann LeCun's accomplishments.
*2017 — John L. Hennessy
Year of first NSF award: 1981.
Turing Award citation: (Co-award with David A. Patterson.) For pioneering a systematic, quantitative approach to the design and evaluation of computer architectures with enduring impact on the microprocessor industry.
Read more about John L. Hennessy's accomplishments.
*2017 — David A. Patterson
Year of first NSF award: 1992.
Turing Award citation: (Co-award with John L. Hennessy.) For pioneering a systematic, quantitative approach to the design and evaluation of computer architectures with enduring impact on the microprocessor industry.
Read more about David A. Patterson's accomplishments.
*2016 — Tim Berners-Lee
Year of first NSF award: 1997.
Turing Award citation: For inventing the World Wide Web, the first web browser and the fundamental protocols and algorithms allowing the Web to scale.
Read more about Tim Berners-Lee's accomplishments.
2015 — Whitfield Diffie
Turing Award citation: (Co-award with Martin Hellman.) For inventing and promulgating both asymmetric public-key cryptography, including its application to digital signatures, and a practical cryptographic key-exchange method.
No known NSF funding.
Read more about Whitfield Diffie's accomplishments.
*2015 — Martin Hellman
Year of first NSF award: 1980.
Turing Award citation: (Co-award with Whitfield Diffie.) For inventing and promulgating both asymmetric public-key cryptography, including its application to digital signatures, and a practical cryptographic key-exchange method.
Read more about Martin Hellman's accomplishments.
*2014 — Michael Stonebraker
Year of first NSF award: 1980.
Turing Award citation: For fundamental contributions to the concepts and practices underlying modern database systems.
Read more about Michael Stonebraker's accomplishments.
*2013 — Leslie Lamport
Year of first NSF award: 1982.
Turing Award citation: 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.
Read more about Leslie Lamport's accomplishments.
*2012 — Shafi Goldwasser
Year of first NSF award: 1988.
Turing Award citation: (Co-award with 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.
Read more about Shafi Goldwasser's accomplishments.
*2012 — Silvio Micali
Year of first NSF award: 1988.
Turing Award citation: (Co-award with 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.
Read more about Silvio Micali's accomplishments.
*2011 — Judea Pearl
Year of first NSF award: 1980.
Turing Award citation: For fundamental contributions to artificial intelligence through the development of a calculus for probabilistic and causal reasoning.
Read more about Judea Pearl's accomplishments.
*2010 — Leslie Gabriel Valiant
Year of first NSF award: 1987.
Turing Award citation: For transformative contributions to the theory of computation, including the theory of probably approximately correct learning, the complexity of enumeration and of algebraic computation, and the theory of parallel and distributed computing.
Read more about Leslie Gabriel Valiant's accomplishments.
2000 – 2009
2009 — Charles P. (Chuck) Thacker
Turing Award citation: 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.
No known NSF funding.
Read more about Charles P. Thacker's accomplishments.
*2008 — Barbara Liskov
Year of first NSF award: 1981.
Turing Award citation: For contributions to practical and theoretical foundations of programming language and system design, especially related to data abstraction, fault tolerance and distributed computing.
Read more about Barbara Liskov's accomplishments.
*2007 — Edmund Melson Clarke
Year of first NSF award: 1982.
Turing Award citation: (Co-award with E. Allen Emerson and Joseph Sifakis.) For their role in developing model checking into a highly effective verification technology that is widely adopted in the hardware and software industries.
Read more about Edmund Melson Clarke's accomplishments.
*2007 — E. Allen Emerson
Year of first NSF award: 1987.
Turing Award citation: (Co-award with Edmund Melson Clarke and Joseph Sifakis.) For their role in developing model checking into a highly effective verification technology that is widely adopted in the hardware and software industries.
Read more about E. Allen Emerson's accomplishments.
2007 — Joseph Sifakis
Turing Award citation: (Co-award with Edmund Melson Clarke and E. Allen Emerson.) For their role in developing model checking into a highly effective verification technology that is widely adopted in the hardware and software industries.
No known NSF funding.
Read more about Joseph Sifakis' accomplishments.
2006 — Frances (Fran) Elizabeth Allen
Turing Award citation: For pioneering contributions to the theory and practice of optimizing compiler techniques that laid the foundation for modern optimizing compilers and automatic parallel execution.
No known NSF funding.
Read more about Frances Elizabeth Allen's accomplishments.
2005 — Peter Naur
Turing Award citation: For fundamental contributions to programming language design and the definition of Algol 60, as well as contributions to compiler design and the art and practice of computer programming.
No known NSF funding.
Read more about Peter Naur's accomplishments.
*2004 — Vinton (Vint) Gray Cerf
Year of first NSF award: 1995.
Turing Award citation: (Co-award with Robert Elliot Kahn.) 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.
Read more about Vinton Gray Cerf's accomplishments.
*2004 — Robert (Bob) Elliot Kahn
NSF funding started: 1981.
Turing Award citation: (Co-award with Vinton Gray Cerf.) For pioneering work on internetworking, including the design and implementation of the internet's basic communications protocols, known as TCP/IP, and for inspired leadership in networking.
Read more about Robert Elliot Kahn's accomplishments.
*2003 — Alan Kay
Year of first NSF award: 2001.
Turing Award citation: 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.
Read more about Alan Kay's accomplishments.
*2002 — Leonard Max Adleman
NSF funding started: 1981.
Turing Award citation: (Co-award with Ronald Linn Rivest and Adi Shamir.) For their ingenious contribution to making public-key cryptography useful in practice.
Read more about Leonard Max Adleman's accomplishments.
*2002 — Ronald Linn Rivest
Year of first NSF award: 1980.
Turing Award citation: (Co-award with Leonard Max Adleman and Adi Shamir.) For their ingenious contribution to making public-key cryptography useful in practice.
Read more about Ronald Linn Rivest's accomplishments.
2002 — Adi Shamir
Turing Award citation: (Co-award with Leonard Max Adleman and Ronald Linn Rivest.) For their ingenious contribution to making public-key cryptography useful in practice.
No known NSF funding.
Read more about Adi Shamir's accomplishments.
2001 — Ole-Johan Dahl
Turing Award citation: (Co-award with Kristen Nygaard.) For ideas fundamental to the emergence of object-oriented programming through their design of the programming languages Simula I and Simula 67.
No known NSF funding.
Read more about Ole-Johan Dahl's accomplishments.
2001 — Kristen Nygaard
Turing Award citation: (Co-award with 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.
No known NSF funding.
Read more about Kristen Nygaard's accomplishments.
*2000 — Andrew Chi-Chih Yao
NSF funding started: 1984.
Turing Award citation: For fundamental contributions to the theory of computation, including the complexity-based theory of pseudorandom number generation, cryptography and communication complexity.
Read more about Andrew Chi-Chih Yao's accomplishments.
1990 – 1999
Year of first NSF award: 2001.
Turing Award citation: For landmark contributions to computer architecture, operating systems and software engineering.
Read more about Frederick Brooks's accomplishments.
Turing Award citation: For seminal contributions to database and transaction processing research and technical leadership in system implementation.
No known NSF funding.
Read more about James Nicholas Gray's accomplishments.
Year of first NSF award: 2005.
Turing Award citation: For an inspiring vision of the future of interactive computing and the invention of key technologies to help realize this vision.
Read more about Douglas Engelbart's accomplishments.
Year of first NSF award: 2001.
Turing Award citation: For seminal work introducing temporal logic into computing science and for outstanding contributions to program and system verification.
Read more about Amir Pnueli's accomplishments.
Year of first NSF award: 1977.
Turing Award citation: In recognition of his contributions to the foundations of computational complexity theory and its application to cryptography and program checking.
Read more about Manuel Blum's accomplishments.
Year of first NSF award: 1980.
Turing Award citation: (Co-award with Dabbala Rajagopal Reddy.) For pioneering the design and construction of large-scale artificial intelligence systems, demonstrating the practical importance and potential commercial impact of AI technology.
Read more about Edward A. Feigenbaum's accomplishments.
Year of first NSF award: 1983.
Turing Award citation: (Co-award with Edward A. Feigenbaum.) For pioneering the design and construction of large-scale artificial intelligence systems, demonstrating the practical importance and potential commercial impact of AI technology.
Read more about Dabbala Rajagopal Reddy's accomplishments.
Year of first NSF award: 1980.
Turing Award citation: (Co-award with Richard Edwin Stearns.) In recognition of their seminal paper which established the foundations for the field of computational complexity theory.
Read more about Juris Hartmanis' accomplishments.
Turing Award citation: (Co-award with Juris Hartmanis.) In recognition of their seminal paper which established the foundations for the field of computational complexity theory.
Read more about Richard Edwin Stearns' accomplishments.
Year of first NSF award: 1999
Turing Award citation: 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.
Read more about Butler W. Lampson's accomplishments.
Turing Award citation: 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.
No known NSF funding.
Read more about Arthur John Robin Gorrell Milner's accomplishments.
Turing Award citation: 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.
No known NSF funding.
Read more about Fernando J. Corbato's accomplishments.
1980 – 1989
Year of first NSF award: 1999.
Turing Award citation: 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!"
Read more about William Morton Kahan's accomplishments.
Year of first NSF award: 1980.
Turing Award citation: For his pioneering and visionary contributions to computer graphics, starting with Sketchpad and continuing after.
Read more about Ivan Sutherland's accomplishments.
Turing Award citation: For significant contributions in the design and theory of compilers, the architecture of large systems and the development of reduced instruction set computers; 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.
No known NSF funding.
Read more about John Cocke's accomplishments.
Year of first NSF award: 1985.
Turing Award citation: (Co-award with Robert Endre Tarjan.) For fundamental achievements in the design and analysis of algorithms and data structures.
Read more about John E. Hopcroft's accomplishments.
Year of first NSF award: 1980.
Turing Award citation: (Co-award with John E. Hopcroft.) For fundamental achievements in the design and analysis of algorithms and data structures.
Read more about Robert Endre Tarjan's accomplishments.
Year of first NSF award: 1981.
Turing Award citation: 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. Karp introduced the now standard methodology for proving problems to be NP-complete which has led to the identification of many theoretical and practical problems as being computationally difficult.
Read more about Richard Manning Karp's accomplishments.
Turing Award citation: For developing a sequence of innovative computer languages: EULER, ALGOL-W, MODULA and PASCAL. PASCAL has become pedagogically significant and has provided a foundation for future computer language, systems and architectural research.
No known NSF funding.
Read more about Niklaus E. Wirth's accomplishments.
No known NSF funding.
Read more about Dennis M. Ritchie's accomplishments.
No known NSF funding.
Read more about Kenneth Lane Thompson's accomplishments.
Turing Award citation: For his advancement of our understanding of the complexity of computation in a significant and profound way. His seminal paper, "The Complexity of Theorem Proving Procedures," presented at the 1971 ACM SIGACT Symposium on the Theory of Computing, laid the foundations for the theory of NP-completeness. The ensuing exploration of the boundaries and nature of NP-complete class of problems has been one of the most active and important research activities in computer science for the last decade.
Read more about Stephen Arthur Cook's accomplishments.
No known NSF funding.
Read more about Edgar F. Codd's accomplishments.
No known NSF funding.
Read more about C. Antony R. Hoare's accomplishments.
1970 – 1979
No known NSF funding.
Read more about Kenneth E. Iverson's accomplishments.
Turing Award citation: 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.
Read more about Robert W. Floyd's accomplishments.
No known NSF funding.
Read more about John Backus's accomplishments.
Turing Award citation: (Co-award with Dana Stewart Scott.) For their joint paper "Finite Automata and Their Decision Problem," which introduced the idea of nondeterministic machines, which has proved to be an enormously valuable concept. Their classic paper has been a continuous source of inspiration for subsequent work in this field.
Read more about Michael O. Rabin's accomplishments.
Turing Award citation: (Co-award with Michael O. Rabin.) For their joint paper "Finite Automata and Their Decision Problem," which introduced the idea of nondeterministic machines, which has proved to be an enormously valuable concept. Their classic paper has been a continuous source of inspiration for subsequent work in this field.
Read more about Dana Stewart Scott's accomplishments.
Turing Award citation: (Co-award with Herbert Alexander Simon.) In joint scientific efforts extending over twenty years, initially in collaboration with J. C. Shaw at the RAND Corporation and subsequentially with numerous faculty and student colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University, Newell and co-recipient Herbert A. Simon made basic contributions to artificial intelligence, the psychology of human cognition and list processing.
Read more about Allen Newell's accomplishments.
Turing Award citation: (Co-award with Allen Newell.) In joint scientific efforts extending over twenty years, initially in collaboration with J. C. Shaw at the RAND Corporation and subsequentially with numerous faculty and student colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University, Simon and co-recipient Allen Newell made basic contributions to artificial intelligence, the psychology of human cognition and list processing.
Read more about Herbert Alexander Simon's accomplishments.
Turing Award citation: 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.
Read more about Donald Ervin Knuth's accomplishments.
No known NSF funding.
Read more about Charles William Bachman's accomplishments.
No known NSF funding.
Read more about Edsgar Wybe Dijkstra's accomplishments.
Turing Award citation: 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.
Read more about John McCarthy's accomplishments.
No known NSF funding.
Read more about James Hardy Wilkinson's accomplishments.
1966 – 1969
Turing Award citation: For his central role in creating, shaping, promoting and advancing the field of artificial intelligence.
Read more about Marvin Minsky's accomplishments.
No known NSF funding.
Read more about Richard W. Hamming's accomplishments.
Turing Award citation: Professor Wilkes is best known as the builder and designer of the EDSAC, the first 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 Wheeler and Gill, of a volume on "Preparation of Programs for Electronic Digital Computers" in 1951, in which program libraries were effectively introduced.
Read more about Maurice V. Wilkes' accomplishments.
Turing Award citation: For his influence in the area of advanced programming techniques and compiler construction.
Read more about Alan J. Perlis's accomplishments.
Please note data prior to 1976 may not be complete.
