Pearl

The Turing Prize or, more properly the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) A.M. Turing Award is the highest distinction in computer science. It is awarded annually and widely regarded, at least among computer scientists, as the equivalent of the Nobel Prize. It recognises landmark achievements in computer science and has largely been awarded for foundational work that underpins the science and application of computing. The 2011 prize has just been awarded to Judea Pearl, a Professor at UCLA, "For fundamental contributions to artificial intelligence through the development of a calculus for probabilistic and causal reasoning".

The work of Judea Pearl is an outstanding example of the power of computer science and the broad reach of the discipline. The core of his work is concerned with how probabilistic, that is uncertain, relationships between variables may be represented. The particular representation associated with the work of Judea Pearl is the 'Bayesian network' which is a graphical model where, crudely, nodes represent variables and directed edges, lines connecting nodes, represent conditional dependencies. A node is associated with a probability distribution that is dependent on the values of the 'parent nodes'. I guess you can read more about this if you are interested. What really matters is that a representation of this form permits the development of algorithms and statistical methods that can solve decision problems under uncertainty.

Though the representation of uncertainty may appear relatively straightforward, it has complex and profound ramifications. In order to develop this work and to understand its implications for work on artificial intelligence, Judah Pearl has worked very broadly across mathematics, philosophy and cognitive science. His work on the nature of causation, a topic of vast importance across all the sciences, as well as to representations of the 'real-world' in artificial intelligence, further exemplifies this. Beyond this work, Judea Pearl has risen above personal tragedy to contribute to cultural understanding. The award, representing our discipline at its finest, is much deserved and makes me proud to be a computer scientist.