Cook, Stephen Arthur

Stephen Arthur Cook, (born Dec. 14, 1939, Buffalo, N.Y., U.S.), American computer scientist and winner of the 1982 A.M. Turing Award, the highest honour in computer science, for his “advancement of our understanding of the complexity of computation in a significant and profound way.”

Cook earned a bachelor’s degree (1961) in computer science from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree (1962) and doctorate (1966) in computer science from Harvard University. After leaving Harvard, Cook joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1970 Cook moved to the University of Toronto, where in 1985 he was named a University Professor.

In 1971 Cook published “The Complexity of Theorem Proving Procedures,” a seminal paper that laid the foundations for the theory of NP-complete problems—problems for which no efficient solution algorithm is known. The field remains one of the most important in computer science.

Cook was elected to the Royal Society of London, the Royal Society of Canada, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.