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  "path": "/2026/05/scott-aaronson-wins-trevisan-award.html",
  "publishedAt": "2026-05-17T11:29:31.000Z",
  "site": "https://blog.computationalcomplexity.org",
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  "textContent": "1) Congratulations to Scott Aaronson for winning the first Trevisan Award.\n\nThe Trevisan Award is in memory of Luca Trevisan and recognizes _expository work in TCS_. It is given out by the ACM. The ACM announcement of Scott's award is here. Scott blogged about winning it here.\n\n2) When preparing this blog post, I googled Trevisan Award. The first hit I got was this. That site says the award was for _significant research._ Hmmm. My first thought was _Scott has, in fact, done significant research. Perhaps I misunderstood the award_. I shared these thoughts with Lance who pointed out I was at the wrong website:\n\nScott won the Trevisan AWARD.\n\nThere is also a Trevisan PRIZE. This was the first hit I got when I googled Trevisan Award.\n\nThere is not yet a Trevisan MEDAL. Give it time.\n\n__\n4) I then realized I did not actually know the difference between an award, a prize, and a medal.\n\na) What are all the ways to honor someone in academia?\n\nb) How do they differ?\n\n5) I asked our future AI overlords:\n\n_In academia there are PRIZES, AWARDS, MEDALS. Other ways to honor people in other fields are Ribbons and Trophies. Are there other ways to honor people? How do they differ?\n_\nChatty gave me 10 pages of interesting material that appeared correct, which is about the best one can hope for. See here. In case you are thinking tl;dr, here is a short version focused on academia, with some of my own thought mixed in.\n\na) Awards: General Recognition of excellence. May or may not involve competition (that's a tautology). I aspire to win _the Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence_.\n\nb) Prizes: Usually competitive. Often recognizes a specific breakthrough.\n\nc) Medals: Prestige and ceremony. Often accompanied by an actual medal.\n\nd) Fellowships: Recognizes a substantial body of work.\n\ne) Named lectures: Prestige plus airfare.\n\nf) Named professorships: Prestige plus discretionary funds.\n\ng) Election to academies: Peer validation with nice stationary.\n\nh) Honorary degrees. A way to get a celebrity speaker at a graduation.\n\ni) Statues. The only academic one I know of is _The Slide Rule Statu_ e, see here.\n\n\nAcademia has many ways to honor people. Apparently the hard part is keeping track of which noun goes with which person.\n\nThe real award was the friends we cited along the way.\n\n\n\n\nBy gasarch",
  "title": "Scott Aaronson wins Trevisan Award? Prize? Medal? Statue?"
}