The mathematician Silvio Micali, born in 1954 in Palermo and a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since the 80s, is one of the winners of the Turing Prize for 2012, a prestigious award considered by many to be the Nobel Prize for computer science. Indeed, in a discipline such as information technology, where there is no Nobel Prize, the Turing Award is considered the most important recognition in the world. It exists since 1966, it has an economic value of 250 thousand dollars and until yesterday it had never been assigned to an Italian scientist.
Micali shares the award with fellow Israeli Shafi Goldwasser, also a professor at MIT and co-author of important works in the field of cryptography and complexity theory, which led to the development of mechanisms widely used today in communication systems, online transactions, cloud computing.
“I am honored by this acknowledgment and grateful to the entire IT community”, is Micali's first statement, released through the MIT site , “When we were still students, we took risks and faced some rejection, but we also received invaluable encouragement from amazing mentors. I'm also proud to see how much other scientists have advanced our initial work."
