Oded Goldreich

Oded Goldreich is a professor of Computer Science at the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science of Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. His research interests lie within the theory of computation and are, specifically, the interplay of randomness and computation, the foundations of cryptography, and computational complexity theory. He won the Knuth Prize in 2017 and was selected in 2021 for the Israel Prize in mathematics.

Goldreich received a DSc in Computer Science at Technion in 1983 under Shimon Even. Goldreich has contributed to the development of pseudorandomness, zero-knowledge proofs, secure function evaluation, property testing, and other areas of cryptography and computational complexity. Goldreich has also authored several books, including Foundations of Cryptography, which comes in two volumes (volume 1 in 2001 and volume 2 in 2004), Computational Complexity: A Conceptual Perspective (2008), and Modern Cryptography, Probabilistic Proofs and Pseudorandomness (1998).

Goldreich received the Knuth prize in 2017 for "fundamental and lasting contributions to theoretical computer science in many areas, including cryptography, randomness, probabilistically checkable proofs, inapproximability, property testing, and complexity theory in general. In addition to his outstanding research contributions, Goldreich has advanced these fields through many survey articles and several first-class textbooks. He has contributed eminent results and new basic definitions and pointed to new directions of research. 

Goldreich has been one of the driving forces for the theoretical computer science community for three decades." In 2021, an Israel Prize committee selected him to win the Israel Prize in mathematics. Education Minister Yoav Galant vetoed his selection over Goldreich's alleged support of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement (BDS) against Israel. One of the reasons for the decision was a letter signed by Goldreich calling the German parliament not to equate BDS with Anti-Semitism.

However, according to Goldreich, he did not support BDS. Instead, he signed a petition calling for the halt of EU funding for the Israeli Ariel University on the occupied West Bank. The prize committee petitioned the Supreme Court of Israel to ensure that Goldreich would win the prize. On 8 April 2021, Israel's Supreme Court of Justice ruled in favor of Galant's petition so that Goldreich could not receive the prize this year and gave Galant a month to further examine the issue. 

On 11 April 2021, a former Israeli Prize Award winner in 2004, Professor David Harel, decided to share his award with Professor Goldreich as a petition act against the official governmental authorities' decision - not to award the prize to 2021 Professor Goldreich. In August 2021, the Supreme Court wrote, "we found it appropriate at this stage to accept the position of the Attorney General that the Education Minister should be allowed to examine new information that he received only two days ago regarding a petition that Professor Goldreich signed that was publicized around two weeks ago." 

This meant that the new Minister of Education, Yifat Shasha-Biton, should resolve the matter. In November 2021, Shasha-Biton announced that she would block Goldreich from receiving the prize. In December 2021, Attorney General Mandelblit told the High Court that Prof. Goldreich should be given the Israel Prize in Mathematics, despite Education Minister Shasha-Biton's decision.

In an editorial, the Jerusalem Post wrote that Goldreich's "calling for the boycott of professional colleagues ... is a red line that shouldn't be crossed". A Haaretz editorial said that Shasha-Biton's decision meant "the most prestigious prize awarded by Israel will not be the mark of scientific excellence but of loyalty to the government." In March 2022, the High Court of Israel ruled that the 2021 prize had to be awarded to Prof. Goldreich. He is married to Dana Ron, a computer scientist at Tel Aviv University who collaborated with Ron on approximation algorithms.