The 2004 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science presented to Richard M. Karp

The Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science is awarded to Dr. Richard M. Karp for his contributions to the understanding of computational complexity. His work helps programmers find workable solution procedures avoiding approaches that would fail to find a solution in a reasonable amount of time. Scientific, commercial, or industrial situations where his work applies include establishing least-cost schedules for industrial production, transportation routing, circuit layout, communication network design, and predicting the spatial structure of a protein from its amino acid sequencing.