Avi Wigderson — a short biography

It is customary for Abel prize winners to write a brief biography in these volumes, and I have done the same below. Writing it, the shortcomings of such an account quickly became apparent. Condensing a person, result, event, experience, or a lesson learned (and there are quite a few of these below) into a sentence or two, leaves so much to be desired and feels like doing an injustice to their meaning for me. But, it had to be done, so here goes.