Informatics Olympiads: The End

[updated: more IMO people added]

I was told I should have a list of links to the posts, so here goes:

• I -- the contest
• II -- why should I care? (with cool statistics about what IOI contestants did later in life, and notable IOI-turned-theorists; see the comments for many people I missed in the original post)
• III -- understanding results
• IV -- important contests besides the IOI

Please, spread the word... Informatics olympiads are a part of our intellectual tradition, and a part that we can be proud of. A theory community that is aware of the olympiads is a stronger, richer community.

Finally, I cannot end without proper credit to the IMO, the parallel Math contest which had already been running for 4 decades when IOI started. Not surprisingly, it has produced some top-notch (not to mention prize-laden) CS theoreticians along the years. Here are a few that I am aware of:

Theorists with prizes:

• László Lovász [ 1966, 1965, 1964, 1963] for Hungary
  
• László Babai [ 1968, 1967, 1966] for Hungary
• Peter Shor [ 1977] for U.S.A.
  
• Johan Håstad [ 1977] for Sweden
  
• Alexander Razborov [ 1979] for Soviet Union
  

Theorists with jobs:

• Rina Panigrahy [ 1990, 1991 ] for India
  
• Moses Charikar [ 1991, 1990 ] for India
  
• Amit Chakrabarti [ 1993 ] for India
  
• Subhash Khot [ 1994, 1995 ] for India
• Martin Pál [ 1995 ] for Slovakia
• Rohit Khandekar [ 1995 ] for India

Pre-job theorists:

• Paul Valiant [ 1999, 2000, 1998 ] for U.S.A.
  
• Shien-Jin Ong [ 2000 ] for Malaysia
• Satyen Kale [ 1997 ] for India
• Swastik Kopparty [ 2000 ] for India