Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman
The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) congratulates Whitfield Diffie, former Chief Security Officer of Sun Microsystems and Martin E. Hellman, Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University on receiving the 2015 ACM A.M. Turing Award for critical contributions to modern cryptography.
Diffie and Hellman invented public key cryptography and digital signatures, the fundamental enablers of our digital society, as we know it today. By doing so they revolutionized our lives and launched the field of Modern Cryptography, a vibrant scientific area that elevated the art of code building into a serious mathematical discipline. The Diffie-Hellman Protocol protects daily Internet communications and trillions of dollars in financial transactions. Their influence has been so dramatic that at least four other Turing awards recognize achievements that were made possible by Diffie and Hellman’s seminal ideas and inventiveness. The lasting effect of their unparalleled breakthrough will remain a pillar for science and for society for many generations to come.
The A.M. Turing award, the ACM’s most prestigious technical award, is given for major contributions of lasting importance to computing and carries a $1 million prize with financial support provided by Google, Inc. Recipients are invited to give the annual A.M. Turing Award lecture.
See the full press release here.
Contributions to this post were made by Tal Rabin, CCC Council Member and Manager of Cryptographic Research at IBM Research.
