Andrew Yao

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Lore & Background

Andrew Chi-Chih Yao is a Chinese computer scientist and theoretical physicist, born in Shanghai and raised in Taiwan after his family moved from Hong Kong. He earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from National Taiwan University, followed by a master’s and a doctorate in theoretical physics from Harvard University, where his doctoral advisor was Nobel laureate Sheldon Glashow. Yao then completed a second Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, supervised by Taiwanese computer scientist Chung Laung Liu. His academic career includes professorships at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and the University of California, Berkeley, before becoming the William and Edna Macaleer Professor of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton University. He later returned to China, joining Tsinghua University as a professor and dean of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences. Yao is best known for applying the minimax theorem to establish Yao’s principle, a foundational result in computational complexity. He received the 2000 ACM Turing Award for fundamental contributions to pseudorandom number generation, cryptography, and communication complexity, as well as the Knuth Prize and the Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology. Yao was a naturalized U.S. citizen for many years but renounced that citizenship in 2015 to become an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of several major scientific societies. His wife, Frances Yao, is also a theoretical computer scientist.

Reader's Guide

Andrew Yao’s foundational contributions to theoretical computer science are anchored in Yao’s principle, a landmark result that applies the minimax theorem to prove lower bounds for randomized algorithms. This work, along with his pioneering advances in pseudorandom number generation, cryptography, and communication complexity, earned him the 2000 ACM Turing Award, the field’s highest honor. His research career began after earning a physics doctorate under Nobel laureate Sheldon Glashow at Harvard and a second computer science doctorate at the University of Illinois. He held professorships at MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and Princeton, where he became the William and Edna Macaleer Professor. In 2004, Yao moved to Tsinghua University in Beijing, founding and directing the Institute for Theoretical Computer Science and later the Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences. He also initiated the Conference on Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science. A naturalized U.S. citizen for many years, Yao renounced that citizenship in 2015 to become an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. His honors include the Knuth Prize, the Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology, and membership in the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. In 2024, he co-authored an expert consensus paper warning of extreme AI risks. His wife, Frances Yao, is also a theoretical computer scientist.

Did You Know?

• He used the minimax theorem to prove what is now known as Yao's principle.

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