| 1 | Name: | Dr. Shmuel Winograd | |
| Institution: | IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center | ||
| Year Elected: | 1989 | ||
| Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | ||
| Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | ||
| Residency: | Resident | ||
| Living? : | Deceased | ||
| Birth Date: | 1936 | ||
| Death Date: | March 25, 2019 | ||
One of the chief founders of the field of mathematics known as Computational Complexity, Shmuel Winograd joined IBM as a research staff member in 1961 and went on to direct the company's mathematical sciences department from 1970-74 and 1980-94. He was an IBM Fellow in the IBM Research Division of the Thomas J. Watson Research Center. Noted for his work on fast algorithms for arithmetic, particularly the Coppersmith-Winograd algorithm, he received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in electrical engineering from MIT in 1959 and his Ph.D. in mathematics from NYU in 1968. Dr. Winograd is credited with answering a fundamental question of computational theory: how many logical steps are required to add or multiply numbers. In an elegant and completely general solution, he answered these key questions for any method of representing numbers and for any kind of circuit design. This work gave computer designers their first analytical tool for determining the ultimate speed of a given technology and also showed, contrary to widely held beliefs, that multiplication could be performed faster than addition. Continuing this work, Dr. Winograd went on to obtain very good estimates on the smallest number of arithmetic operations needed to do certain very frequently used mathematical computations. Dr. Winograd was a fellow of the IEEE and ACM and a member of SIAM, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. | |||