Dijkstra Prize

The Edsger W. Dijkstra Prize in Distributed Computing is named for Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (1930-2002), a pioneer in the area of distributed computing. His foundational work on concurrency, semaphores, mutual exclusion, deadlock, finding shortest paths in graphs, fault-tolerance, self-stabilization, among many other contributions comprises one of the most important supports upon which the field of distributed computing is built. No other individual has had a larger influence on research in principles of distributed computing.

The prize is given for outstanding papers on the principles of distributed computing, whose significance and impact on the theory and/or practice of distributed computing has been evident for at least a decade. The Prize includes an award of $2000.

The Prize is sponsored jointly by the ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC) and the EATCS Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC). This award is presented annually, with the presentation taking place alternately at ACM PODC and EATCS DISC.

This year it will be presented at PODC 2010. The winners of the award will share the cash award, and each winning author will be presented with a plaque. An announcement of each year's prize recipient(s) will be included in the ACM PODC or EATCS DISC proceedings of that year, describing the paper's lasting contributions. 

Nominations and Eligibility

Nominations may be made by any member of the scientific community. Each nomination must identify the paper being nominated and include a few paragraphs (approximately 400 words) justifying the nomination. Papers appearing in any conference proceedings or journal are eligible, as long as they have had a significant impact on research areas of interest within the theory of distributed computing community, and as long as the year of the original publication is at least ten years prior to the year in which the award is given.

Papers authored or co-authored by members of the Award Committee will not be eligible for consideration. Members of the Award Committee will be especially sensitive to conflict-of-interests issues if papers by former students or close colleagues are nominated.

Please send your nomination to the Co-Chairs of the Award Committee, Nancy Lynch ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) and/or Alex Shvartsman ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ). Please mind that the nominations deadline is June 1, 2010. 

Selection Process

Although the Award Committee is encouraged to consult with the distributed computing community at large, the Award Committee is solely responsible for the selection of the winner of the award. The prize may be shared by more than one paper. All matters relating to the selection process that are not specified here are left to the discretion of the Award Committee.

Past Prizes

Prizes in the years 2000-2002 were given under the name "PODC Influential-Paper Award".

	2009 / Joseph Halpern, Yoram Moses Paper: "Knowledge and Common Knowledge in a Distributed Environment", published in Proceedings of the Third Annual ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC'84) pp. 50-61, 1984 (pdf), and in Journal of the ACM (JACM), 37(3):549-587, 1990 (pdf)

	2008 / Baruch Awerbuch, David Peleg Paper: "Sparse Partitions" published in FOCS 1990.

	2007/ Cynthia Dwork, Nancy Lynch, Larry Stockmeyer Paper: "Consensus in the presence of partial synchrony", Journal of the ACM, Vol. 35, No. 2, April, 1988. pages 288--323 (a preliminary version appeared in PODC 1984).

	2006 / John M. Mellor-Crummey, Michael L. Scott Paper: "Algorithms for scalable synchronization on shared-memory multiprocessors", ACM Transactions on Computer Systems, 9(1), 1991

	2005 / Marshal Pease, Robert Shostak, Leslie Lamport Paper: "Reaching agreement in the presence of faults", Journal of the Association of Computing Machinery, April, 1980, 27(1):228-234

	2004 / R. G. Gallager, P. A. Humblet, P. M. Spira Paper: "A Distributed Algorithm for Minimum-Weight Spanning Trees", ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems, January 1983, 5(1):66-77

	2003 / Maurice Herlihy Paper: "Wait-Free Synchronization", ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems, January 1991, 13(1):124-149

	2002 / Edsger W. Dijkstra Paper: "Self-stabilizing systems in spite of distributed control", Communications of the ACM, 1974, 17(11):643-644

	2001 / Michael J. Fischer, Nancy A. Lynch, Michael S. Paterson Paper: "Impossibility of Distributed Consensus with One Faulty Process", Journal of the ACM, April 1985, 32(2):374-382

	2000 / Leslie Lamport Paper: "Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System", Communications of the ACM, July 1978, 21(7):558-565