The P vs NP Problem and its Place in Complexity Theory

Abstract: The Clay Mathematics Institute offers a million dollars to anyone solving the question of whether P equals NP. We discuss the importance of the problem and explain why most complexity theorists believe P unequal NP, despite the dramatic success of programs solving huge instances of the satisfiability problem.

We show how this question is related to other fundamental problems in complexity theory, including the entangled problems of whether NP has polynomial size circuits, and whether some problems are inherently easier to solve using a source of random bits. The question of whether NP equals coNP motivates the important field of propositional proof complexity.

Speaker's Bio: Stephen Cook was born in Buffalo, New York, received his BSc degree from University of Michigan in 1961, and his S.M. and PhD degrees from Harvard University in 1962 and 1966 respectively. From 1966 to 1970 he was Assistant Professor, University of California, Berkeley. He joined the faculty at the University of Toronto in 1970 as an Associate Professor, and was promoted to Professor in 1975 and University Professor in 1985. His principal research areas are computational complexity and proof complexity, with excursions into programming language semantics and parallel computation. He is the author of over 60 research papers, including his famous 1971 paper "The Complexity of Theorem Proving Procedures" which introduced the theory of NP completeness and proved that the Boolean satisfiability problem is NP complete. He is the 1982 recipient of the Turing award, and was awarded a Steacie Fellowship in 1977, a Killam Research Fellowship in 1982, and received the CRM/Fields Institute Prize in 1999. He received Computer Science teaching awards in 1989 and 1995. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of London, Royal Society of Canada, and was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences (United States) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Twenty-six students have completed their PhD degrees under his supervision, and many of them now have prominent academic careers of their own.