Computer Science Pioneer Richard Karp Takes an Algorithmic Approach

April 9, 2009

By taking courses in the early 1950s at Harvard University's computation laboratory, where the pioneering Mark IV computer had been built, undergraduate Richard Karp sensed that the field of computer science was going to take off.

"I could have made a decent career in pure mathematics, but I didn't really feel compelled to," Karp, now 74, told Investor's Business Daily. Instead, "I was more interested in applicable mathematics, which was not particularly in fashion, at least in the Harvard mathematics department."

With a Ph.D. in applied mathematics, Karp joined IBM to create problem-solving algorithms—an endeavor which helped spur the growth of the computer industry.

"There was something that appealed to me about the way a nicely designed algorithm works like clockwork," Karp said. "All the parts fit together. It's sort of the way a carpenter would feel about a nice piece of woodworking, except you're not dealing with physical materials but mathematical entities. A good algorithm gives that same feeling of everything clicking together just the right way."

In 1968, Karp left IBM to teach computer science and mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley. Along the way, he won numerous honors, including the 1985 A.M. Turing Award and the 2008 Kyoto Prize for his studies of algorithms, which resolved a variety of network- and system-based challenges: managing traffic patterns; setting up utility, gas, and water lines; determining efficient ways to lay wires on integrated circuit boards; and scheduling complex school courses.

Karp's later findings were instrumental in creating the field of bioinformatics, including the decoding of the human genome, and demonstrating causality between gene structures and disease. Karp also did significant mathematical research in the theory of NP-completeness, which resulted in his landmark 1972 paper "Reducibility among Combinatorial Problems."

Karp "was so successful because he was working on real-world issues and trying to apply the most relevant theory to them," Vijay Vazirani (Georgia Tech) said.

Source: Investor's Business Daily, March 16, 2009.