What Kind of Person Wins the Turing Award?

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the backgrounds and characteristics of Turing Award laureates to identify common factors and trends that contribute to their influence in computer science.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive dataset and analysis of laureates' personal, academic, and professional traits, revealing new insights into the profiles of influential computer scientists.

Findings

Most laureates are white, male, married, US citizens with a PhD.

Age at award has increased over the years.

Birth order correlates with success; citations are less indicative.

Abstract

Computer science has grown rapidly since its inception in the 1950s and the pioneers in the field are celebrated annually by the A.M. Turing Award. In this paper, we attempt to shed light on the path to influential computer scientists by examining the characteristics of the 72 Turing Award laureates. To achieve this goal, we build a comprehensive dataset of the Turing Award laureates and analyze their characteristics, including their personal information, family background, academic background, and industry experience. The FP-Growth algorithm is used for frequent feature mining. Logistic regression plot, pie chart, word cloud and map are generated accordingly for each of the interesting features to uncover insights regarding personal factors that drive influential work in the field of computer science. In particular, we show that the Turing Award laureates are most commonly white, male, married, United States citizen, and received a PhD degree. Our results also show that the age at which the laureate won the award increases over the years; most of the Turing Award laureates did not major in computer science; birth order is strongly related to the winners' success; and the number of citations is not as important as one would expect.