Charles Weill Rackoff is an American cryptologist. Born and raised in New York City, he attended

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

as both an undergraduate and graduate student, and earned a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science in 1974. He spent a year as a postdoctoral scholar at

INRIA The National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology (Inria) () is a French national research institution focusing on computer science and applied mathematics. It was created under the name ''Institut de recherche en informatiq ...

in France. Rackoff currently works at the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...

. His research interests are in

computational complexity theory In theoretical computer science and mathematics, computational complexity theory focuses on classifying computational problems according to their resource usage, and relating these classes to each other. A computational problem is a task solved by ...

. For some time now he has been specializing in

cryptography Cryptography, or cryptology (from grc, , translit=kryptós "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adver ...

and security protocols. In 1988, he collaborated with

Michael Luby Michael George Luby is a mathematician and computer scientist, CEO of BitRipple, Senior Research Scientist at the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI), former VP Technology at Qualcomm, co-founder and former Chief Technology Officer ...

in a widely cited analysis of the

Feistel cipher In cryptography, a Feistel cipher (also known as Luby–Rackoff block cipher) is a symmetric structure used in the construction of block ciphers, named after the German-born physicist and cryptographer Horst Feistel, who did pioneering research whi ...

construction (one important result shown there is the construction of a strongly pseudo random permutation generator from a pseudo random function generator). Rackoff was awarded the 1993

Gödel Prize The Gödel Prize is an annual prize for outstanding papers in the area of theoretical computer science, given jointly by the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS) and the Association for Computing Machinery Special Inter ...

for his work on

interactive proof systems In computational complexity theory, an interactive proof system is an abstract machine that models computation as the exchange of messages between two parties: a ''prover'' and a ''verifier''. The parties interact by exchanging messages in order t ...

and for being one of the co-inventors of

zero-knowledge proofs In cryptography, a zero-knowledge proof or zero-knowledge protocol is a method by which one party (the prover) can prove to another party (the verifier) that a given statement is true while the prover avoids conveying any additional information a ...

. In 2011 he won the

RSA Award for Excellence in Mathematics RSA may refer to: Organizations Academia and education * Rabbinical Seminary of America, a yeshiva in New York City *Regional Science Association International (formerly the Regional Science Association), a US-based learned society *Renaissance S ...

for his various contributions to cryptography. Rackoff's controversial comments on the 2000 memorial for the victims of the

Montreal Massacre Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous city in the Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as '' Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple-pea ...

were reported in the Canadian media.

Selected publications

* S. Goldwasser, S. Micali and C. Rackoff, "The knowledge complexity of interactive proof systems",

SIAM Journal on Computing The ''SIAM Journal on Computing'' is a scientific journal focusing on the mathematical and formal aspects of computer science. It is published by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). Although its official ISO abbreviation is ...

, 18, 1989, pp. 186–208. * C. Rackoff and D. Simon, "Non-interactive zero-knowledge proof of knowledge and the chosen cipertext attack", in Proceedings of Crypto 91, pp. 433–444. * C. Rackoff and D. Simon, "Cryptographic defense against traffic analysis", in Proceedings of the 25th ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, May 1993, pp. 672–681.

References

Living people 1948 births Scientists from New York City American computer scientists American cryptographers Modern cryptographers Gödel Prize laureates MIT School of Engineering alumni University of Toronto faculty International Association for Cryptologic Research fellows Mathematicians from New York (state) {{crypto-bio-stub