Searching for a truth is a benefit for society

Our feature this month is an interview with Professor Pavel Pudlák of the Institute of Mathematics of the ASCR. The European Research Council (ERC) awarded him for results he achieved in computational complexity. The only Czech contestant in the prestigious competition of the ERC Advanced Grants program this year, Professor Pudlák received financial support as an experienced researcher. His project was Feasibility, logic and randomness in computational complexity. Computational complexity has a brief history as a discipline. Only recently has it been recognized as an important field not only in information science but also in mathematics. A factor is the fact that basic questions in this area (such as the famous problem of P versus NP) are mathematical tasks that for several decades have defied all attempts at resolution. The group led by Professor Pudlák approaches these questions using the methods of mathematical logic.