Ron Rivest
The R in RSA
RSA, MD5, RC4 and a career of primitives everyone uses
Rating
97Impact score
Domains
Public-key cryptographyHash functionsElection security
Scouting report
Co-invented the RSA cryptosystem at MIT in 1977 with Shamir and Adleman, turning public-key cryptography from a proposal into something you could ship. Went on to design MD2, MD4, MD5, RC4, RC5 and RC6, co-author the standard algorithms textbook, and spend his later career on verifiable election systems. Turing Award, 2002.
Curator’s note
Half the acronyms in a 1990s protocol stack trace back to one office at MIT.
Portrait
Painted from a photograph of Ron Rivest by Sherman,_Rivest,_and_Chaum.jpg: carback1 derivative work: Bonnifac (talk), licensed CC BY-SA 3.0.
Sources
- 01Ron Rivest en.wikipedia.org
- 02ACM A.M. Turing Award 2002 amturing.acm.org