Ralph C. Merkle
From wikipedia:
Ralph C. Merkle (born February 2, 1952) is a computer scientist. He is one of the inventors of public key cryptography, the inventor of cryptographic hashing, and more recently a researcher and speaker of cryonics.
Merkle devised a scheme for communication over an insecure channel: Merkle’s puzzles as part of a class project while an undergraduate. The scheme is now recognized to be an early example of public key cryptography. He co-invented the Merkle–Hellman knapsack cryptosystem, invented cryptographic hashing (now called the Merkle–Damgård construction based on a pair of articles published 10 years later that established the security of the scheme), and invented Merkle trees. While at Xerox PARC, Merkle designed the Khufu and Khafre block ciphers, and the Snefru hash function.
Merkle was the manager of compiler development at Elxsi from 1980. In 1988, he became a research scientist at Xerox PARC. In 1999 he became a nanotechnology theorist for Zyvex. In 2003 he became a Distinguished Professor at Georgia Tech, where he led the Georgia Tech Information Security Center. In 2006 he returned to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he has been a senior research fellow at IMM, a faculty member at Singularity University, and a board member of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation. He was awarded the IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal in 2010.
Links
- Ralph C. Merkle on Wikipedia
- Complete List of Research Papers on merkle.com
- Apr 1978 merkle.com - Protocols for Public Key Cryptosystems
- Apr 1978 merkle.com - Secure Communications over Insecure Channels
- 04-Jun-1979 merkle.com - Secrecy, Authentication, And Public Key Systems - this is his PhD thesis, where he proposed the cryptographic hash function
- 27-Oct-2013 Gideon Samid on Youtube - Ralph Merkle: Privacy Between Strangers
- 25-Jul-2016 Epicenter Bitcoin on Youtube - EB141 – Ralph Merkle: Revolutionizing Democracy Using DAOs
Please note that the information presented on this site was composed from publicly available materials in mainly 2017 and 2018 and has not been significantly updated since.
The information presented here may be significantly out of date or even inaccurate. In the case of inaccuracy, please file an Issue in the GitHub repo. The site should not be used as a source of truth.