Theoretical computer science

This article is about the branch of computer science and

mathematics. For the journal, see Theoretical Computer
Science (journal).
Theoretical computer science is a division or subset of

cation. This means that the so-called theory people regularly use experimental science(s) done in less-theoretical
areas such as software system research. It also means that
there is more cooperation than mutually exclusive competition between theory and application.

1 History
Main article: History of computer science
While logical inference and mathematical proof had existed previously, in 1931 Kurt Gdel proved with his
incompleteness theorem that there were fundamental limitations on what statements could be proved or disproved.

An artistic representation of a Turing machine. Turing machines

are used to model general computing devices.

These developments have led to the modern study of

logic and computability, and indeed the eld of theoretical computer science as a whole. Information theory
was added to the eld with a 1948 mathematical theory of communication by Claude Shannon. In the same
decade, Donald Hebb introduced a mathematical model
of learning in the brain. With mounting biological data
supporting this hypothesis with some modication, the
elds of neural networks and parallel distributed processing were established. In 1971, Stephen Cook and, working independently, Leonid Levin, proved that there exist
practically relevant problems that are NP-complete a
landmark result in computational complexity theory.

general computer science and mathematics that focuses

on more abstract or mathematical aspects of computing
and includes the theory of computation.
It is not easy to circumscribe the theory areas precisely
and the ACM's ACM SIGACT (SIGACT) describes its
mission as the promotion of theoretical computer science
and notes:[1]
The eld of theoretical computer science is
interpreted broadly so as to include algorithms,
data structures, computational complexity theory, distributed computation, parallel computation, VLSI, machine learning, computational
biology, computational geometry, information
theory, cryptography, quantum computation,
computational number theory and algebra,
program semantics and verication, automata
theory, and the study of randomness. Work in
this eld is often distinguished by its emphasis
on mathematical technique and rigor.

With the development of quantum mechanics in the beginning of the 20th century came the concept that mathematical operations could be performed on an entire particle wavefunction. In other words, one could compute
functions on multiple states simultaneously. This led to
the concept of a quantum computer in the latter half of
the 20th century that took o in the 1990s when Peter
Shor showed that such methods could be used to factor large numbers in polynomial time, which, if implemented, would render most modern public key cryptogTo this list, the ACMs journal Transactions on Compu- raphy systems uselessly insecure.
tation Theory adds coding theory, computational learning Modern theoretical computer science research is based
theory and theoretical computer science aspects of areas on these basic developments, but includes many other
such as databases, information retrieval, economic mod- mathematical and interdisciplinary problems that have
els and networks.[2] Despite this broad scope, the the- been posed.
ory people in computer science self-identify as dierent
from the applied people. Some characterize themselves
as doing the "(more fundamental) 'science(s)' underlying
the eld of computing.[3] Other theory-applied people 2 Topics
suggest that it is impossible to separate theory and appli1

2.1

2 TOPICS

Algorithms

Main article: Algorithm

An algorithm is a step-by-step procedure for calculations.
Algorithms are used for calculation, data processing, and
automated reasoning.

used. The theory formalizes this intuition, by introducing

mathematical models of computation to study these problems and quantifying the amount of resources needed to
solve them, such as time and storage. Other complexity
measures are also used, such as the amount of communication (used in communication complexity), the number
of gates in a circuit (used in circuit complexity) and the
number of processors (used in parallel computing). One
of the roles of computational complexity theory is to determine the practical limits on what computers can and
cannot do.

An algorithm is an eective method expressed as a

nite list[4] of well-dened instructions[5] for calculating a function.[6] Starting from an initial state and initial input (perhaps empty),[7] the instructions describe
a computation that, when executed, proceeds through a
nite[8] number of well-dened successive states, eventually producing output[9] and terminating at a nal end- 2.4 Distributed computation
ing state. The transition from one state to the next is
not necessarily deterministic; some algorithms, known as Main article: Distributed computation
randomized algorithms, incorporate random input.[10]
Distributed computing studies distributed systems. A
distributed system is a software system in which com2.2 Data structures
ponents located on networked computers communicate
and coordinate their actions by passing messages.[13] The
Main article: Data structure
components interact with each other in order to achieve
a common goal. Three signicant characteristics of disA data structure is a particular way of organizing data in tributed systems are: concurrency of components, lack of
a computer so that it can be used eciently.[11][12]
a global clock, and independent failure of components.[13]
Dierent kinds of data structures are suited to dierent Examples of distributed systems vary from SOA-based
kinds of applications, and some are highly specialized to systems to massively multiplayer online games to peerspecic tasks. For example, databases use B-tree indexes to-peer applications.
for small percentages of data retrieval and compilers and A computer program that runs in a distributed system
databases use dynamic hash tables as look up tables.
is called a distributed program, and distributed programming
is the process of writing such programs.[14]
Data structures provide a means to manage large amounts
of data eciently for uses such as large databases and There are many alternatives for the message passing
internet indexing services. Usually, ecient data struc- mechanism, including RPC-like connectors and message
tures are key to designing ecient algorithms. Some for- queues. An important goal and challenge of distributed
mal design methods and programming languages empha- systems is location transparency.
size data structures, rather than algorithms, as the key organizing factor in software design. Storing and retrieving
can be carried out on data stored in both main memory 2.5 Parallel computation
and in secondary memory.
Main article: Parallel computation

2.3

Computational complexity theory

Main article: Computational complexity theory

Computational complexity theory is a branch of the
theory of computation that focuses on classifying
computational problems according to their inherent difculty, and relating those classes to each other. A computational problem is understood to be a task that is in
principle amenable to being solved by a computer, which
is equivalent to stating that the problem may be solved by
mechanical application of mathematical steps, such as an
algorithm.
A problem is regarded as inherently dicult if its solution
requires signicant resources, whatever the algorithm

Parallel computing is a form of computation in which

many calculations are carried out simultaneously,[15] operating on the principle that large problems can often
be divided into smaller ones, which are then solved
concurrently (in parallel). There are several dierent
forms of parallel computing: bit-level, instruction level,
data, and task parallelism. Parallelism has been employed
for many years, mainly in high-performance computing,
but interest in it has grown lately due to the physical constraints preventing frequency scaling.[16] As power consumption (and consequently heat generation) by computers has become a concern in recent years,[17] parallel computing has become the dominant paradigm in computer
architecture, mainly in the form of multi-core processors.[18]

2.9

Computational geometry

Parallel computer programs are more dicult to write

than sequential ones,[19] because concurrency introduces
several new classes of potential software bugs, of which
race conditions are the most common. Communication
and synchronization between the dierent subtasks are
typically some of the greatest obstacles to getting good
parallel program performance.
The maximum possible speed-up of a single program as
a result of parallelization is known as Amdahls law.

2.6

Very-large-scale integration

Main article: VLSI

Very-large-scale integration (VLSI) is the process of creating an integrated circuit (IC) by combining thousands
of transistors into a single chip. VLSI began in the 1970s
when complex semiconductor and communication technologies were being developed. The microprocessor is a
VLSI device. Before the introduction of VLSI technology most ICs had a limited set of functions they could
perform. An electronic circuit might consist of a CPU,
ROM, RAM and other glue logic. VLSI lets IC makers
add all of these into one chip.

3
Computational biology involves the development and
application of data-analytical and theoretical methods, mathematical modeling and computational simulation techniques to the study of biological, behavioral, and social systems.[25] The eld is broadly dened and includes foundations in computer science,
applied mathematics, animation, statistics, biochemistry,
chemistry, biophysics, molecular biology, genetics,
genomics, ecology, evolution, anatomy, neuroscience,
and visualization.[26]
Computational biology is dierent from biological computation, which is a subeld of computer science and
computer engineering using bioengineering and biology
to build computers, but is similar to bioinformatics, which
is an interdisciplinary science using computers to store
and process biological data.

2.9 Computational geometry

Main article: Computational geometry

Computational geometry is a branch of computer science devoted to the study of algorithms that can be stated
in terms of geometry. Some purely geometrical problems arise out of the study of computational geometric
algorithms, and such problems are also considered to be
part of computational geometry. While modern compu2.7 Machine learning
tational geometry is a recent development, it is one of the
oldest elds of computing with history stretching back to
Main article: Machine learning
antiquity. An ancient precursor is the Sanskrit treatise
Shulba Sutras , or Rules of the Chord, that is a book
Machine learning is a scientic discipline that deals with of algorithms written in 800 BCE. The book prescribes
the construction and study of algorithms that can learn step-by-step procedures for constructing geometric obfrom data.[20] Such algorithms operate by building a jects like altars using a peg and chord.
model based on inputs[21]:2 and using that to make pre- The main impetus for the development of computadictions or decisions, rather than following only explicitly tional geometry as a discipline was progress in computer
programmed instructions.
graphics and computer-aided design and manufacturMachine learning can be considered a subeld of com- ing (CAD/CAM), but many problems in computational
puter science and statistics. It has strong ties to articial geometry are classical in nature, and may come from
intelligence and optimization, which deliver methods, mathematical visualization.
theory and application domains to the eld. Machine
learning is employed in a range of computing tasks
where designing and programming explicit, rule-based
algorithms is infeasible. Example applications include
spam ltering, optical character recognition (OCR),[22]
search engines and computer vision. Machine learning is
sometimes conated with data mining,[23] although that
focuses more on exploratory data analysis.[24] Machine
learning and pattern recognition can be viewed as two
facets of the same eld.[21]:vii

Other important applications of computational geometry include robotics (motion planning and visibility problems), geographic information systems (GIS) (geometrical location and search, route planning), integrated circuit
design (IC geometry design and verication), computeraided engineering (CAE) (mesh generation), computer
vision (3D reconstruction).

2.10 Information theory

Main article: Information theory

2.8

Computational biology

Main article: Computational biology

Information theory is a branch of applied mathematics,

electrical engineering, and computer science involving
the quantication of information. Information theory was

4
developed by Claude E. Shannon to nd fundamental limits on signal processing operations such as compressing
data and on reliably storing and communicating data.
Since its inception it has broadened to nd applications in
many other areas, including statistical inference, natural
language processing, cryptography, neurobiology,[27] the
evolution[28] and function[29] of molecular codes, model
selection in ecology,[30] thermal physics,[31] quantum
computing, linguistics, plagiarism detection,[32] pattern
recognition, anomaly detection and other forms of data
analysis.[33]
Applications of fundamental topics of information theory include lossless data compression (e.g. ZIP les),
lossy data compression (e.g. MP3s and JPEGs), and
channel coding (e.g. for Digital Subscriber Line (DSL)).
The eld is at the intersection of mathematics, statistics,
computer science, physics, neurobiology, and electrical
engineering. Its impact has been crucial to the success
of the Voyager missions to deep space, the invention
of the compact disc, the feasibility of mobile phones,
the development of the Internet, the study of linguistics
and of human perception, the understanding of black
holes, and numerous other elds. Important sub-elds
of information theory are source coding, channel coding,
algorithmic complexity theory, algorithmic information
theory, information-theoretic security, and measures of
information.

2 TOPICS
padbut these schemes are more dicult to implement
than the best theoretically breakable but computationally
secure mechanisms.

2.12 Quantum computation

Main article: Quantum computation
A quantum computer is a computation system that makes
direct use of quantum-mechanical phenomena, such as
superposition and entanglement, to perform operations on
data.[37] Quantum computers are dierent from digital
computers based on transistors. Whereas digital computers require data to be encoded into binary digits (bits),
each of which is always in one of two denite states (0
or 1), quantum computation uses qubits (quantum bits),
which can be in superpositions of states. A theoretical
model is the quantum Turing machine, also known as
the universal quantum computer. Quantum computers
share theoretical similarities with non-deterministic and
probabilistic computers; one example is the ability to be
in more than one state simultaneously. The eld of quantum computing was rst introduced by Yuri Manin in
1980[38] and Richard Feynman in 1982.[39][40] A quantum
computer with spins as quantum bits was also formulated
for use as a quantum spacetime in 1968.[41]

As of 2014, quantum computing is still in its infancy

but experiments have been carried out in which quan2.11 Cryptography
tum computational operations were executed on a very
small number of qubits.[42] Both practical and theoretical
Main article: Cryptography
research continues, and many national governments and
military funding agencies support quantum computing reCryptography is the practice and study of techniques search to develop quantum computers for both civilian
[43]
for secure communication in the presence of third and national security purposes, such as cryptanalysis.
parties (called adversaries).[34] More generally, it is
about constructing and analyzing protocols that overcome the inuence of adversaries[35] and that are related 2.13 Computational number theory
to various aspects in information security such as data
condentiality, data integrity, authentication, and non- Main article: Computational number theory
repudiation.[36] Modern cryptography intersects the disciplines of mathematics, computer science, and electrical Computational number theory, also known as algorithengineering. Applications of cryptography include ATM mic number theory, is the study of algorithms for percards, computer passwords, and electronic commerce.
forming number theoretic computations. The best known
Modern cryptography is heavily based on mathematical problem in the eld is integer factorization.
theory and computer science practice; cryptographic algorithms are designed around computational hardness assumptions, making such algorithms hard to break in practice by any adversary. It is theoretically possible to break
such a system, but it is infeasible to do so by any known
practical means. These schemes are therefore termed
computationally secure; theoretical advances, e.g., improvements in integer factorization algorithms, and faster
computing technology require these solutions to be continually adapted. There exist information-theoretically
secure schemes that provably cannot be broken even with
unlimited computing poweran example is the one-time

2.14 Symbolic computation

Main article: Symbolic computation
Computer algebra, also called symbolic computation or
algebraic computation is a scientic area that refers to
the study and development of algorithms and software
for manipulating mathematical expressions and other
mathematical objects. Although, properly speaking,
computer algebra should be a subeld of scientic com-

2.17

Automata theory

puting, they are generally considered as distinct elds because scientic computing is usually based on numerical
computation with approximate oating point numbers,
while symbolic computation emphasizes exact computation with expressions containing variables that have not
any given value and are thus manipulated as symbols
(therefore the name of symbolic computation).
Software applications that perform symbolic calculations
are called computer algebra systems, with the term system alluding to the complexity of the main applications
that include, at least, a method to represent mathematical data in a computer, a user programming language
(usually dierent from the language used for the implementation), a dedicated memory manager, a user interface for the input/output of mathematical expressions, a
large set of routines to perform usual operations, like simplication of expressions, dierentiation using chain rule,
polynomial factorization, indenite integration, etc.

2.17 Automata theory

Main article: Automata theory
Automata theory is the study of abstract machines and
automata, as well as the computational problems that can
be solved using them. It is a theory in theoretical computer science, under Discrete mathematics (a section of
Mathematics and also of Computer Science). Automata
comes from the Greek word meaning selfacting.
Automata Theory is the study of self-operating virtual
machines to help in logical understanding of input and
output process, without or with intermediate stage(s) of
computation (or any function / process).

2.18 Coding theory

2.15 Program semantics

Main article: Coding theory

Main article: Program semantics

Coding theory is the study of the properties of codes and

their tness for a specic application. Codes are used
for data compression, cryptography, error-correction and
more recently also for network coding. Codes are studied
by various scientic disciplinessuch as information theory, electrical engineering, mathematics, and computer
sciencefor the purpose of designing ecient and reliable data transmission methods. This typically involves
the removal of redundancy and the correction (or detection) of errors in the transmitted data.

In programming language theory, semantics is the eld

concerned with the rigorous mathematical study of the
meaning of programming languages. It does so by evaluating the meaning of syntactically legal strings dened by
a specic programming language, showing the computation involved. In such a case that the evaluation would be
of syntactically illegal strings, the result would be noncomputation. Semantics describes the processes a computer follows when executing a program in that specic
language. This can be shown by describing the relation2.19 Computational learning theory
ship between the input and output of a program, or an
explanation of how the program will execute on a certain
Main article: Computational learning theory
platform, hence creating a model of computation.

2.16 Formal methods

Main article: Formal methods
Formal methods are a particular kind of mathematics
based techniques for the specication, development and
verication of software and hardware systems.[44] The use
of formal methods for software and hardware design is
motivated by the expectation that, as in other engineering
disciplines, performing appropriate mathematical analysis can contribute to the reliability and robustness of a
design.[45]
Formal methods are best described as the application of a
fairly broad variety of theoretical computer science fundamentals, in particular logic calculi, formal languages,
automata theory, and program semantics, but also type
systems and algebraic data types to problems in software
and hardware specication and verication.[46]

Theoretical results in machine learning mainly deal with

a type of inductive learning called supervised learning.
In supervised learning, an algorithm is given samples that
are labeled in some useful way. For example, the samples might be descriptions of mushrooms, and the labels
could be whether or not the mushrooms are edible. The
algorithm takes these previously labeled samples and uses
them to induce a classier. This classier is a function
that assigns labels to samples including the samples that
have never been previously seen by the algorithm. The
goal of the supervised learning algorithm is to optimize
some measure of performance such as minimizing the
number of mistakes made on new samples.

3 Organizations
European Association for Theoretical Computer
Science

7 NOTES
SIGACT

Journals and newsletters

Information and Computation
Theory of Computing (open access journal)
Formal Aspects of Computing
Journal of the ACM
SIAM Journal on Computing (SICOMP)

International Conference on Theory and Applications of Models of Computation (TAMC)

European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA)[48]
IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science
(LICS)[47]
International Symposium on Algorithms and Computation (ISAAC)[48]
Workshop on Approximation Algorithms for Combinatorial Optimization Problems (APPROX)[48]

SIGACT News

Workshop on Randomization and Computation

(RANDOM)[48]

Theoretical Computer Science

Computational Complexity Conference (CCC)[48]

Theory of Computing Systems

ACM Symposium on Parallelism in Algorithms and

Architectures (SPAA)[48]

International Journal of Foundations of Computer

Science
Chicago Journal of Theoretical Computer Science
(open access journal)
Foundations and Trends in Theoretical Computer
Science
Journal of Automata, Languages and Combinatorics
Acta Informatica

ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed

Computing (PODC)[47]
International Symposium on Fundamentals of Computation Theory (FCT)[49]
Annual Conference on Learning Theory (COLT)[48]
International Workshop on Graph-Theoretic Concepts in Computer Science (WG)

Fundamenta Informaticae
ACM Transactions on Computation Theory

6 See also

Computational Complexity

Formal science

ACM Transactions on Algorithms

Unsolved problems in computer science

Information Processing Letters

List of important publications in theoretical computer science

Conferences
Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing
(STOC)[47]

7 Notes
[1] SIGACT. Retrieved 2009-03-29.

Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS)[47]

[2] ToCT. Retrieved 2010-06-09.

ACMSIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms

(SODA)[47]

[3] Challenges for Theoretical Computer Science: Theory

as the Scientic Foundation of Computing. Retrieved
2009-03-29.

Annual Symposium on Computational Geometry

(SoCG)[48]
International Colloquium on Automata, Languages
and Programming (ICALP)[48]
Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer
Science (STACS)[48]

[4] Any classical mathematical algorithm, for example, can

be described in a nite number of English words (Rogers
1987:2).
[5] Well dened with respect to the agent that executes the
algorithm: There is a computing agent, usually human,
which can react to the instructions and carry out the computations (Rogers 1987:2).

[6] an algorithm is a procedure for computing a function

(with respect to some chosen notation for integers) ... this
limitation (to numerical functions) results in no loss of
generality, (Rogers 1987:1).
[7] An algorithm has zero or more inputs, i.e., quantities
which are given to it initially before the algorithm begins
(Knuth 1973:5).
[8] A procedure which has all the characteristics of an algorithm except that it possibly lacks niteness may be called
a 'computational method'" (Knuth 1973:5).
[9] An algorithm has one or more outputs, i.e. quantities which have a specied relation to the inputs (Knuth
1973:5).

Even representatives from Intel, a company generally associated with the 'higher clock-speed is better' position,
warned that traditional approaches to maximizing performance through maximizing clock speed have been pushed
to their limit.
[19] Hennessy, John L.; Patterson, David A.; Larus, James
R. (1999). Computer organization and design : the hardware/software interface (2. ed., 3rd print. ed.). San Francisco: Kaufmann. ISBN 1-55860-428-6.
[20] Ron Kovahi; Foster Provost (1998). Glossary of terms.
Machine Learning 30: 271274.
[21] C. M. Bishop (2006). Pattern Recognition and Machine
Learning. Springer. ISBN 0-387-31073-8.

[10] Whether or not a process with random interior processes

(not including the input) is an algorithm is debatable.
Rogers opines that: a computation is carried out in a discrete stepwise fashion, without use of continuous methods
or analogue devices . . . carried forward deterministically,
without resort to random methods or devices, e.g., dice
Rogers 1987:2.

[22] Wernick, Yang, Brankov, Yourganov and Strother, Machine Learning in Medical Imaging, IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, vol. 27, no. 4, July 2010, pp. 25-38

[11] Paul E. Black (ed.), entry for data structure in Dictionary

of Algorithms and Data Structures. U.S. National Institute
of Standards and Technology. 15 December 2004. Online
version Accessed May 21, 2009.

[24] Friedman, Jerome H. (1998). Data Mining and Statistics:

Whats the connection?". Computing Science and Statistics
29 (1): 39.

[12] Entry data structure in the Encyclopdia Britannica

(2009) Online entry accessed on May 21, 2009.
[13] Coulouris, George; Jean Dollimore; Tim Kindberg; Gordon Blair (2011). Distributed Systems: Concepts and Design (5th Edition). Boston: Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0132-14301-1.
[14] Andrews (2000). Dolev (2000). Ghosh (2007), p. 10.
[15] Gottlieb, Allan; Almasi, George S. (1989). Highly
parallel computing.
Redwood City, Calif.: Benjamin/Cummings. ISBN 0-8053-0177-1.
[16] S.V. Adve et al. (November 2008). Parallel Computing
Research at Illinois: The UPCRC Agenda (PDF). Parallel@Illinois, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
The main techniques for these performance benets
increased clock frequency and smarter but increasingly
complex architectures are now hitting the so-called
power wall. The computer industry has accepted that future performance increases must largely come from increasing the number of processors (or cores) on a die,
rather than making a single core go faster.
[17] Asanovic et al. Old [conventional wisdom]: Power is free,
but transistors are expensive. New [conventional wisdom]
is [that] power is expensive, but transistors are free.
[18] Asanovic, Krste et al. (December 18, 2006). The
Landscape of Parallel Computing Research: A View
from Berkeley (PDF). University of California, Berkeley. Technical Report No. UCB/EECS-2006-183. Old
[conventional wisdom]: Increasing clock frequency is the
primary method of improving processor performance.
New [conventional wisdom]: Increasing parallelism is the
primary method of improving processor performance ...

[23] Mannila, Heikki (1996). Data mining: machine learning,

statistics, and databases. Int'l Conf. Scientic and Statistical Database Management. IEEE Computer Society.

[25] NIH working denition of bioinformatics and computational biology (PDF). Biomedical Information Science
and Technology Initiative. 17 July 2000. Retrieved 18
August 2012.
[26] About the CCMB. Center for Computational Molecular
Biology. Retrieved 18 August 2012.
[27] F. Rieke, D. Warland, R Ruyter van Steveninck, W Bialek
(1997). Spikes: Exploring the Neural Code. The MIT
press. ISBN 978-0262681087.
[28] cf. Huelsenbeck, J. P., F. Ronquist, R. Nielsen and J. P.
Bollback (2001) Bayesian inference of phylogeny and its
impact on evolutionary biology, Science 294:2310-2314
[29] Rando Allikmets, Wyeth W. Wasserman, Amy Hutchinson, Philip Smallwood, Jeremy Nathans, Peter K. Rogan,
Thomas D. Schneider, Michael Dean (1998) Organization
of the ABCR gene: analysis of promoter and splice junction sequences, Gene 215:1, 111-122
[30] Burnham, K. P. and Anderson D. R. (2002) Model Selection and Multimodel Inference: A Practical InformationTheoretic Approach, Second Edition (Springer Science,
New York) ISBN 978-0-387-95364-9.
[31] Jaynes, E. T. (1957) Information Theory and Statistical
Mechanics, Phys. Rev. 106:620
[32] Charles H. Bennett, Ming Li, and Bin Ma (2003) Chain
Letters and Evolutionary Histories, Scientic American
288:6, 76-81
[33] David R. Anderson (November 1, 2003). Some background on why people in the empirical sciences may want
to better understand the information-theoretic methods
(pdf). Retrieved 2010-06-23.

[34] Rivest, Ronald L. (1990). Cryptology. In J. Van

Leeuwen. Handbook of Theoretical Computer Science 1.
Elsevier.
[35] Bellare, Mihir; Rogaway, Phillip (21 September 2005).
Introduction. Introduction to Modern Cryptography. p.
10.
[36] Menezes, A. J.; van Oorschot, P. C.; Vanstone, S. A.
Handbook of Applied Cryptography. ISBN 0-8493-85237.
[37] "Quantum Computing with Molecules" article in Scientic
American by Neil Gershenfeld and Isaac L. Chuang
[38] Manin, Yu. I. (1980). Vychislimoe i nevychislimoe [Computable and Noncomputable] (in Russian). Sov.Radio. pp.
1315. Retrieved 4 March 2013.
[39] Feynman, R. P. (1982). Simulating physics with computers. International Journal of Theoretical Physics 21
(6): 467488. doi:10.1007/BF02650179.
[40] Deutsch, David (1992-01-06). Quantum computation.
Physics World.
[41] Finkelstein, David (1968). Space-Time Structure in
High Energy Interactions. In Gudehus, T.; Kaiser, G.
Fundamental Interactions at High Energy. New York:
Gordon & Breach.
[42] New qubit control bodes well for future of quantum computing. Retrieved 26 October 2014.
[43] Quantum Information Science and Technology Roadmap
for a sense of where the research is heading.
[44] R. W. Butler (2001-08-06). What is Formal Methods?".
Retrieved 2006-11-16.
[45] C. Michael Holloway. Why Engineers Should Consider
Formal Methods (PDF). 16th Digital Avionics Systems
Conference (2730 October 1997). Retrieved 2006-1116.
[46] Monin, pp.3-4
[47] The 2007 Australian Ranking of ICT Conferences: tier
A+.
[48] The 2007 Australian Ranking of ICT Conferences: tier
A.
[49] FCT 2011 (retrieved 2013-06-03)

Further reading
Martin Davis, Ron Sigal, Elaine J. Weyuker, Computability, complexity, and languages: fundamentals of theoretical computer science, 2nd ed., Academic Press, 1994, ISBN 0-12-206382-1. Covers
theory of computation, but also program semantics
and quantication theory. Aimed at graduate students.

EXTERNAL LINKS

9 External links
SIGACT directory of additional theory links
Theory Matters Wiki Theoretical Computer Science
(TCS) Advocacy Wiki
Usenet comp.theory
List of academic conferences in the area of theoretical computer science at confsearch
Theoretical Computer Science - StackExchange, a
Question and Answer site for researchers in theoretical computer science
Computer Science Animated
http://theory.csail.mit.edu/ @ Massachusetts Institute of Technology

10
10.1

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

Text

Theoretical computer science Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theoretical_computer_science?oldid=699378328 Contributors: Stan

Shebs, David.Monniaux, Tobias Bergemann, Giftlite, Mahanga, Ruud Koot, Arbor, Protez, SLi, Intgr, Lmatt, RussBot, Arado, Dv82matt,
SamuelRiv, Haon, JLaTondre, Bsod2, SmackBot, Impaciente, Renku, Powo, OrangeDog, Arindamp, Salt Yeung, SpyMagician, RekishiEJ,
Zhoadon~enwiki, Irwangatot, BeenAroundAWhile, Gregbard, GPhilip, Pascal.Tesson, Christian75, Kilva, Ideogram, Ben1220, Hermel,
JAnDbot, Cic, David Eppstein, Maurice Carbonaro, Mrseacow, Merzul, Squids and Chips, Jimmaths, Jaime v torres heredia~enwiki,
Robertekraut, Palaeovia, Ivan tambuk, Arapajoe, Maxime.Debosschere, Sbshah25, ClueBot, EoGuy, Niceguyedc, Brianbjparker, Addbot,
Yobot, Legobot II, Pcap, AnomieBOT, DemocraticLuntz, HRV, Papppfae, Miym, Thore Husfeldt, , Prari, FrescoBot,
Kiefer.Wolfowitz, Zedoul, RobinK, SchreyP, EmausBot, Surlydu50, Chricho, Cogiati, Ian Rastall, Sarimurat, Fortnow, Helpful Pixie
Bot, Neutral current, Mejoribus, Rodrigo Folha, Je Erickson, Computhematics, Brirush, Balamurugan Kanakaraj, Andywear1, KasparBot,
Klairh.fr, Udubey, Andjela1013 and Anonymous: 64

10.2

Images

File:6n-graf.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/6n-graf.svg License: Public domain Contributors:

Image:6n-graf.png simlar input data Original artist: User:AzaToth
File:Blochsphere.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/Blochsphere.svg License: CC-BY-SA-3.0 Contributors: Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons. Original artist: MuncherOfSpleens at English Wikipedia
File:Commutative_diagram_for_morphism.svg Source:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/Commutative_
diagram_for_morphism.svg License: Public domain Contributors: Own work, based on en:Image:MorphismComposition-01.png Original
artist: User:Cepheus
File:DFAexample.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/DFAexample.svg License: Public domain Contributors: Own work Original artist: Cepheus
File:Elliptic_curve_simple.png Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Elliptic_curve_simple.png License:
CC-BY-SA-3.0 Contributors: Upload from English Wikipedia. The original description is/was here. Original artist: Created by Sean
. + 23:33, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
File:Internet_map_1024.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Internet_map_1024.jpg License: CC BY
2.5 Contributors: Originally from the English Wikipedia; description page is/was here. Original artist: The Opte Project
File:Maquina.png Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/Maquina.png License: Public domain Contributors:
en.wikipedia Original artist: Schadel (http://turing.izt.uam.mx)
File:SimplexRangeSearching.png Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/SimplexRangeSearching.png License: Public domain Contributors: Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons. Original artist: Gfonsecabr at English Wikipedia
File:TSP_Deutschland_3.png Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c4/TSP_Deutschland_3.png License: Public
domain Contributors: https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/maps/gm-map.gif Original artist: The original uploader was Kapitn
Nemo at German Wikipedia
File:Wang_tiles.png Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Wang_tiles.png License: Public domain Contributors: ? Original artist: ?

10.3

Content license

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0