Richard Karp is an American computer scientist known for his significant contributions to the fields of algorithms and computational complexity. He was born on April 3, 1935, and is particularly famous for developing the Karp's 21 NP-complete problems, which helped establish the foundation for the study of NP-completeness in computer science. Karp has held academic positions at several prestigious institutions, including the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the National Medal of Science in 1987, highlighting his influence on both theoretical and practical aspects of computer science.