Martin Hellman
Co-Author of Public-Key Cryptography
Diffie–Hellman, and the fight to keep crypto research public
Rating
97Impact score
Domains
CryptographyKey exchangeAcademic freedom
Scouting report
Co-author of the 1976 paper and Stanford professor who then refused to let the NSA classify academic cryptography out of existence, publishing and teaching through explicit pressure to stop. Also co-authored the early analysis of DES key length that argued, correctly and years early, that 56 bits was not enough. Shared the 2015 Turing Award with Diffie.
Curator’s note
Won the maths, then won the argument about who is allowed to do the maths.
Portrait
Painted from a photograph of Martin Hellman by User .:Ajvol:. on en.wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 3.0.
Sources
- 01Martin Hellman en.wikipedia.org
- 02ACM A.M. Turing Award 2015 amturing.acm.org