Manuel Blum

Timeline

1. 1938–1964

   Studying neural networks at MIT

   Born in Caracas in 1938, he studies at MIT, where he works with Warren McCulloch on mathematical problems in neural networks. He earns a mathematics PhD under Marvin Minsky in 1964.

2. 1968–2001

   Berkeley, then Carnegie Mellon

   He joins the Berkeley faculty in 1968 and moves to Carnegie Mellon as a visiting professor in 1999. He becomes the Bruce Nelson University Professor there in 2001.

3. 1986

   The Blum Blum Shub generator

   In 1986 he publishes A Simple Unpredictable Pseudo-Random Number Generator with Lenore Blum and Mike Shub. The design becomes known as the Blum Blum Shub generator.

4. 1995

   A Turing Award

   He wins the 1995 Turing Award for work in theoretical computer science on computational complexity, cryptography and program checking.

5. 2000–2004

   The CAPTCHA test

   In 2000 a Carnegie Mellon team that includes him develops CAPTCHA, a test for telling computers and humans apart. In 2004 he co-writes Telling Humans and Computers Apart Automatically in Communications of the ACM.

6. 2002–2006

   Seats in two national academies

   He is elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2002 and to the National Academy of Engineering in 2006.

7. 2023

   A Conscious Turing Machine

   He and Lenore Blum develop a theory of consciousness around the Conscious Turing Machine. In 2023 they publish a viewpoint on consciousness and artificial general intelligence.

8. As of October 2026

   University professor emeritus

   He is University Professor Emeritus at Carnegie Mellon University. In July 2025 he speaks at the Smale@95 conference on whether machines can have consciousness.