2025 Basic Science Lifetime Award recipient Robert Endre Tarjan said it was the world of sci-fi that inspired him to pursue a career in scientific research and admitted he even had a childhood dream of being the first human to walk on Mars.
"It interested me in science. It drove me to try to understand what we can accomplish with our minds," the U.S. computer scientist and mathematician said in a recent exclusive interview with the China Central Television (CCTV) in Beijing.
"I wanted to be the first person on the Mars," Tarjan said when mentioning the influence of science fictions on his scientific career.
"It's still possible. But maybe not anymore. I lost this ambition some time ago," he added.
"But somehow, I discovered mathematics and I fell in love with the subject. It has the advantage that a statement is either a theorem or it's not a theorem. Everything is black and white, cut and dried, and it's incredibly complicated. So, it appeals to my sense of puzzles and to my desire to see things resolved ultimately," Tarjan said.
Tarjan was in Beijing to attend the 2025 International Congress of Basic Science (ICBS) where he was honored with the lifetime award.
The award represents the highest distinction in fundamental science, celebrating a scientist's enduring impact on the field.
Tarjan said undertaking scientific research is a tough journey but filled with fun and wonderful surprises.
"There's a vast array of possible problems to work on. If you can't solve one problem, maybe you can solve another problem. So, if you have a few of them to trade off against each other, that's one thing. Another thing is you get stuck. You get stuck, you get stuck, you leave the problem for weeks or months or sometimes years. Come back to it later. Maybe now you have a new insight, so the brain works in funny ways. You know the process is much unconscious as it is conscious, which makes it interesting," he said.
The 2025 ICBS, which concluded on Friday, gathered hundreds of scientists, experts and scholars in Beijing.
Six globally renowned scientists, including Nobel laureates Samuel Chao Chung Ting, Steven Chu, and David Jonathan Gross, Turing Award recipient Robert Endre Tarjan, Fields Medalist Shigefumi Mori, and Wolf Prize winner George Lusztig, were honored with the lifetime awards for their transformative contributions spanning mathematics, physics, and information science over three decades.
Turing laureate Robert Tarjan says sci-fi inspires his exploration of scientific research
