Yuris Hartmanis Scientist in the field of computer systems theory Date of Birth: 05.07.1928 Country: Latvia

1. Early Life and Education
2. Academic and Research Career
3. Contributions to Computer Science
4. Honors and Awards

Early Life and Education

Juris Hartmanis was born in Latvia in 1928, the son of Martins Hartmanis, a general in the Latvian army. In 1940, his father was arrested and died in prison. Fearing persecution from the Soviet government, Martins Hartmanis' widow and children fled abroad at the end of World War II. The family settled in Germany, where Juris Hartmanis earned a diploma in physics from the University of Marburg.

He then moved to the United States, earning an M.S. in applied mathematics from the University of Kansas (1951) and a Ph.D. in mathematics from the California Institute of Technology under Robert Palmer Dilworth (1955).

Academic and Research Career

Hartmanis taught at Ohio State University and Cornell University before joining the General Electric Research Laboratory in 1958. In 1965, he returned to Cornell University as a professor, co-founder, and first chairman of the Department of Computer Science, one of the oldest computer science departments in the world.

Contributions to Computer Science

Hartmanis made seminal contributions to the field of computational complexity theory. Together with Richard Stearns, he won the Turing Award in 1993 "for their fundamental work which established the theoretical foundations of computational complexity." Their paper, "On the computational complexity of algorithms," introduced several complexity classes (DTIME) and proved the time hierarchy theorem.

Honors and Awards

1993 - Turing Award with Richard Stearns "in recognition of their fundamental work which established the theoretical foundations of computational complexity"

1999 - Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Kansas