This September in Germany, between talks at the Heidelberg Laureate Forum, I managed to catch a few minutes with Cornell professor John Hopcroft.
He’s a guy with bigger things on his mind.
“I’m at a stage in my life,” he says, “where I’d like to do something which makes the world better for a large number of people.”
Skimming Hopcroft’s C.V., you start to wonder: Um… hasn’t he done that already?
Born to a janitor and a bookkeeper, he grew up to become a foundational figure in computer science. Exhibit A: His textbooks on automata, algorithms, and discrete math have been adopted across the world. (His most recent one—on data science—is free online.) Exhibit B: He has a distinguished research record, highlighted in 1986 with a Turing Award— the closest thing to a Nobel for computer science. And finally, Exhibit C: During a decorated teaching career, he was twice named Cornell’s “most inspiring” professor.
With all this, you’ve got to figure he’s done at least a little good for a few people, right?
Well, Hopcroft has a larger number in mind: 1.3 billion.
Hopcroft has become an advisor to Li Keqiang, the Premier of China. He describes this as “the opportunity of a lifetime”: to transform Chinese education for the better.
“They have one quarter of the world’s talent,” Hopcroft says, “but their university educational system is really very poor.”
What makes Hopcroft—working-class Seattle-ite turned Ivy League professor—think he can leave his mark on a country as vast, distant, and internally diverse as China? Isn’t this like a swimmer trying to steer an aircraft carrier?
“A couple of things are going in my favor,” he says. First, he is apolitical. “I don’t have any special agenda to push in China,” Hopcroft explains. “I’m pushing education.”
The second is subtler, and carries echoes of Hopcroft’s engineering background.
“I understand the scale of the problem,” Hopcroft says.
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