Nick Pippenger
Nicholas John Pippenger | |
|---|---|
| Alma mater | Shimer College (B.S. in Natural Sciences), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Ph.D.) |
| Occupation(s) | Computer scientist, researcher, professor |
| Known for | Theoretical computer science, database systems, compiler optimization, Nick's Class (NC) |
| Spouse | Maria Klawe |
| Awards | IBM Fellow, Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (1997), Fellow of the American Mathematical Society (2013) |
Nicholas John Pippenger is a distinguished researcher in computer science, recognized for his pioneering work in theoretical computer science, database systems, and compiler optimization. He attained the prestigious title of IBM Fellow at the IBM Research Center located in Almaden, San Jose, California. Throughout his academic career, Pippenger has served on the faculties of Princeton University, the University of British Columbia, and joined Harvey Mudd College in 2006.
Pippenger completed his undergraduate studies with a B.S. in Natural Sciences from Shimer College and earned his doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is married to Maria Klawe, who previously served as President of Harvey Mudd College. In 1997, he was honored as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, and in 2013, he was inducted as a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society.
The complexity category known as Nick's Class (NC), which encompasses problems that can be efficiently solved using parallel computing methods, was named by Stephen Cook in tribute to Pippenger’s research involving polylogarithmic-depth circuits of polynomial size.
Beyond his technical achievements, Pippenger authored a concise Latin paper introducing a novel expression for the constant e. This formula adapts the Wallis product for π by incorporating roots of its factors:
- <math>\frac{e}{2} = \left(\frac{2}{1}\right)^{1/2} \left(\frac{2}{3}\frac{4}{3}\right)^{1/4} \left(\frac{4}{5}\frac{6}{5}\frac{6}{7}\frac{8}{7}\right)^{1/8} \cdots.</math>