Google bumps the prize for the AM Turing Award up to $1 million

Google, a long-time sponsor of the AM Turing Award, sometimes called the Nobel of computing, has quadrupled the prize money for the award to $1 million. The Association for Computing Machinery has been handing out the A.M. Turing Award annually since 1966, honoring computer scientists and engineers for “major contributions of lasting importance to computing.” Google has been a sponsor since 2007. The award, named after British mathematician and cryptographer Alan Turing, has so far been accompanied by a cash prize of $250,000. 

There’s no Nobel prize for computer science, but after a grant from Google, the top award in the field now just as lucrative.
The Turing Award now is worth $1 million, quadruple its earlier value, the Association for Computing Machinery announced Thursday. “With the generous support of Google, we can celebrate the mainstream role of computing in transforming the world and the way we communicate, conduct business and access entertainment,” said ACM President Alexander Wolf in a statement (PDF). Since the days of Alfred Nobel, who grew rich off the invention of the explosive TNT, scientific and technical research has changed dramatically. Physics and chemistry are crucial foundations to making computers work — this year’s Nobel Prize for blue-light LEDs now powering the displays of tablets, smartphones and laptops are a good example. But Google today mostly concentrates its resources at the higher levels of programming, algorithms and system design that the Turing Award recognizes.