Stephen Arthur Cook is best known for his work on computer theory, NP-complete problems, and satisfiability.

Stephen Arthur Cook was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1939. His father was a chemist for Union Carbide and also taught at the local University of Buffalo. When Stephen was 10 years old the family moved to a dairy farm in Clarence, New York. This was also the home of Wilson Greatbatch, the inventor of the implantable pacemaker. The young Cook struck up a friendship with Greatbatch and spent much time helping him solder transistors. It was this early experience that persuaded Stephen Cook to become an electrical engineer. In 1957 he entered the University of Michigan on their science engineering course. During his time at Michigan he and a friend devised a program to test Goldbach's conjecture (any even integer greater than 3 is the sum of two primes). As far as the program...