László Babai

Who is László Babai?

László Babai is a Hungarian professor of mathematics and computer science at the University of Chicago. His research focuses on computational complexity theory, algorithms, combinatorics, and finite groups, with an emphasis on the interactions between these fields. He is the author of over 180 academic papers.

His notable accomplishments include the introduction of interactive proof systems, the introduction of the term Las Vegas algorithm, and the introduction of group theoretic methods in graph isomorphism testing.

Babai studied mathematics at Eötvös Loránd University from 1968 to 1973, received a Ph.D. from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1975, and received a D.Sc. from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1984. He held a teaching position at Eötvös Loránd University since 1971; in 1987 he took joint positions as a professor in algebra Eötvös Loránd and in computer science at the University of Chicago. In 1995 he began a joint appointment in the mathematics department at Chicago and gave up his position at Eötvös Loránd.

He is editor-in-chief of the refereed online journal Theory of Computing. Babai was also involved in the creation of the Budapest Semesters in Mathematics program and first coined the name.