Peter Williston Shor (born August 14, 1959) is an American professor of applied mathematics at MIT, most famous for his work on quantum computation, in particular for devising Shor's algorithm, a quantum algorithm for factoring exponentially faster than the best currently-known algorithm running on a classical computer.
While attending Tamalpais High School, in Mill Valley, California, he placed third in the 1977 USA Mathematical Olympiad. After ...
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Peter Williston Shor (born August 14, 1959) is an American professor of applied mathematics at MIT, most famous for his work on quantum computation, in particular for devising Shor's algorithm, a quantum algorithm for factoring exponentially faster than the best currently-known algorithm running on a classical computer.
While attending Tamalpais High School, in Mill Valley, California, he placed third in the 1977 USA Mathematical Olympiad. After graduating that year, he won a second prize at the International Math Olympiad in Yugoslavia (the U.S. team achieved the most points per country that year). He received his B.S. in Mathematics in 1981 for undergraduate work at Caltech, and was a Putnam Fellow in 1978. He then earned his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from MIT in 1985. His doctoral advisor was Tom Leighton, and his thesis was on probabilistic analysis of bin-packing algorithms.
After graduating, he spent one year in a post-doctoral position at the University of California at...
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