Nicholas John Pippenger is a researcher in

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

. He has produced a number of fundamental results many of which are being widely used in the field of

theoretical computer science Theoretical computer science is a subfield of computer science and mathematics that focuses on the Abstraction, abstract and mathematical foundations of computation. It is difficult to circumscribe the theoretical areas precisely. The Associati ...

, database processing and

compiler optimization An optimizing compiler is a compiler designed to generate code that is optimized in aspects such as minimizing program execution time, memory usage, storage size, and power consumption. Optimization is generally implemented as a sequence of op ...

. He has also achieved the rank of

IBM Fellow An IBM Fellow is a position at IBM appointed by the CEO. Typically only four to nine (eleven in 2014) IBM Fellows are appointed each year, in May or June. Fellow is the highest honor a scientist, engineer, or programmer at IBM can achieve. Over ...

at Almaden IBM Research Center in

San Jose, California San Jose, officially the City of San José ( ; ), is a cultural, commercial, and political center within Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area. With a city population of 997,368 and a metropolitan area population of 1.95 million, it is ...

. He has taught at the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a Public university, public research university with campuses near University of British Columbia Vancouver, Vancouver and University of British Columbia Okanagan, Kelowna, in British Columbia, Canada ...

Vancouver Vancouver is a major city in Western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the cit ...

, British Columbia, Canada and at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

in the US. In the Fall of 2006 Pippenger joined the faculty of

Harvey Mudd College Harvey Mudd College (HMC) is a private liberal arts college in Claremont, California, focused on science and engineering. It is part of the Claremont Colleges, which share adjoining campus grounds and resources. The college enrolled 902 undergra ...

. Pippenger holds a B.S. in Natural Sciences from

Shimer College Shimer Great Books School ( ) is a Classic_book#University_programs, Great Books college that is part of North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. Prior to 2017, Shimer was an independent, accredited college on the south side of Chicago, or ...

and a

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

. He is married to

Maria Klawe Maria Margaret Klawe ( ; born 1951) is a Canadian-American computer scientist and served as the fifth president of Harvey Mudd College from 2006 to 2023. Born in Toronto in 1951, she became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2009. She was previously ...

, former President of

. In 1997 he was inducted as a

Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned or professional societies, the term refers ...

. In 2013 he became a fellow of the

American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...

. The complexity class, Nick's Class (NC), of problems quickly solvable on a parallel computer, was named by

Stephen Cook Stephen Arthur Cook (born December 14, 1939) is an American-Canadian computer scientist and mathematician who has made significant contributions to the fields of complexity theory and proof complexity. He is a university professor emeritus at ...

after Nick Pippenger for his research on circuits with polylogarithmic depth and polynomial size. Pippenger became one of the most recent mathematicians to write a technical article in

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

, when he published a brief derivation of a new formula for '' e'', whereby the Wallis product for is modified by taking roots of its terms: :

\frac = \left(\frac\right)^ \left(\frac\frac\right)^ \left(\frac\frac\frac\frac\right)^ \cdots.

References

External links

Pippenger's web page
at HMC Harvey Mudd College faculty IBM Fellows 1997 fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Fellows of the American Mathematical Society Theoretical computer scientists American computer scientists Living people Shimer College alumni Year of birth missing (living people) Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni {{compu-scientist-stub