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Leonid Levin




Leonid Levin (born November 2, 1948 , USSR ) is a Computer scientist. He studied under Andrey Kolmogorov .

He obtained his first Ph.D. in 1972 at Moscow University . Later, he emigrated to the USA in 1978 and earned another Ph.D at the Massachusetts Institute Of Technology in 1979 .

He is well known for his work in Randomness in Computing , Algorithmic Complexity and intractability, foundations of Mathematics and Computer Science , Algorithmic Probability , Theory Of Computation , and Information Theory .

His life is described in a chapter in the book: ''Out of Their Minds: The Lives and Discoveries of 15 Great Computer Scientists''.

Levin independently discovered a theorem that was also discovered and proven by Stephen Cook . The theorem, which is known as the Cook or Cook-Levin theorem, was a breakthrough in Computer Science and is the foundation of Computational Complexity . Levin's journal article on this theorem was published in 1973; he reports that he had lectured on it for some years before that time. See {Link without Title} , also listed among the ''external links'' below.

He is currently a professor of computer science at Boston University , where he began teaching in 1980 .


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