Les Valiant

Leslie Valiant was educated at King's College, Cambridge; Imperial College, London; and at Warwick University where he received his PhD in computer science in 1974. He is currently T. Jefferson Coolidge Professor of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University, where he has taught since 1982. Before coming to Harvard he had taught at Carnegie Mellon University, Leeds University, and the University of Edinburgh.

His work has ranged over several areas of theoretical computer science, particularly complexity theory, learning, and parallel computation. He also has interests in computational neuroscience, evolution and artificial intelligence and is the author of three books, Circuits of the Mind, Probably Approximately Correct, and The Importance of Being Educable.

He received the Nevanlinna Prize at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1986, and the 2010 A. M. Turing Award. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society (London) and a member of the National Academy of Sciences (USA).