Cristopher Moore graduated from Northwestern University with honors in 1986, at the age of 18, with a B.A. in Mathematics, Physics, and Integrated Science. He received his Ph.D. in Physics from Cornell University at the age of 23. After a postdoc at the Santa Fe Institute, he joined the faculty of the University of New Mexico, where he holds joint appointments in Computer Science and Physics and Astronomy. He has written over 90 papers, on topics ranging from undecidability in dynamical systems, to quantum computing, to phase transitions in NP-complete problems, to the analysis of social and biological networks.

Stephan Mertens got his Diploma in Physics in 1989, and his Ph.D. in Physics in 1991, both from Georg-August University Göttingen. He holds scholarships from the "Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes", Germany's most prestigious organisation sponsoring the academically gifted. After his Ph.D. he worked for three years in the software industry before he joined the faculty of Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg as a theoretical physicist. His research focuses on disordered systems in statistical mechanics, average case complexity of algorithms, and parallel computing.

• 1: Prologue


• 2: The Basics


• 3: Insights and Algorithms


• 4: Needles in a Haystack: The class NP


• 5: Who is the Hardest One of All: NP-Completeness


• 6: The Deep Question: P vs. NP


• 7: Memory, Paths and games


• 8: Grand Unified Theory of Computation


• 9: Simply the Best: Optimization


• 10: The Power of Randomness


• 11: Random Walks and Rapid Mixing


• 12: Counting, Sampling, and Statistical Physics


• 13: When Formulas Freeze: Phase Transitions in Computation


• 14: Quantum Computing


• 15: Epilogue


• 16: Appendix: Mathematical Tools