Peter Shor

Peter Williston Shor (born August 14, 1959, in New York City) is an American theoretical computer scientist known for devising Shor's algorithm, a quantum algorithm that factors integers exponentially faster than the best known classical algorithm, with direct implications for breaking widely used public key cryptosystems. He earned his PhD from MIT in 1985 and worked at the University of California, Berkeley and at Bell Labs, where he developed the algorithm in 1994, before joining MIT in 2003 as a professor of applied mathematics affiliated with the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Beyond his namesake factoring algorithm he developed the Shor code and the CSS quantum error correcting code and contributed to the quantum threshold theorem. His work has been recognized with the Rolf Nevanlinna Prize in 1998, the Godel Prize in 1999, a MacArthur Fellowship in 1999, and the Claude E. Shannon Award in 2025.