ABSTRACT
Computers and Intractability: A Guide to the Theory of NP-Completeness, by Michael R. Garey and David S. Johnson, was published 40 years ago (1979). Despite its age, it is unanimously considered by many in the computational complexity community as its most important book. NP-completeness is perhaps the single most important concept to come out of theoretical computer science. The book was written in the late 1970s, when problems solvable in polynomial time were linked to the concepts of efficiently solvable and tractability, and the complexity class NP was defined to capture the concept of good characterization. Besides his contributions to the theory of NP-completeness, David S. Johnson also made important contributions to approximation algorithms and the experimental analysis of algorithms. This paper summarizes many of Johnson’s contributions to these areas and is an homage to his memory.
Keywords:
NP-completeness; approximation algorithms; experimental analysis of algorithms