Dr. Peter Shor

Professor

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Biography

Peter Shor is the Henry Adams Morss Professor of Applied Mathematics at MIT. He received a B.A. in mathematics from Caltech in 1981 and a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from MIT in 1985, under the direction of Tom Leighton. Following his doctoral studies, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at MSRI and joined AT&T, where he was a member of the research staff from 1986 to 2003. Shor joined the MIT faculty in 2003 as a full professor in applied mathematics. His research interests lie in theoretical computer science, particularly in algorithms, quantum computing, computational geometry, and combinatorics. He has received numerous accolades, including the Nevanlinna Prize in 1998 and the King Faisal International Prize in Science in 2002. He became a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2002, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011, and received the Dirac Medal from the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in 2017. Shor has also been recognized with the IEEE Eric E. Sumner Award for Outstanding Contributions to Communications Technology and the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics in 2023. His work has fundamentally shaped the foundations of quantum computing, earning him accolades and honors throughout his esteemed career.

Research Interests

Experience

Professor

— Present

Massachusetts Institute of Technology • Cambridge, MA

Full professor in applied mathematics.

Awards

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Nevanlinna Prize

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King Faisal International Prize in Science

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IEEE Eric E. Sumner Award

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Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics