Claus-Peter Schnorr (born 4 August 1943) is a German

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

and cryptographer.

Life

He received his

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...

from the

University of Saarbrücken Saarland University (german: Universität des Saarlandes, ) is a public research university located in Saarbrücken, the capital of the German state of Saarland. It was founded in 1948 in Homburg in co-operation with France and is organized in s ...

in 1966, and his

habilitation Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching and further education, usually including a ...

in 1970. Schnorr's contributions to cryptography include his study of

Schnorr group A Schnorr group, proposed by Claus P. Schnorr, is a large prime-order subgroup of \mathbb_p^\times, the multiplicative group of integers modulo p for some prime p. To generate such a group, generate p, q, r such that :p = qr + 1 with p, q prime. ...

s, which are used in the

digital signature algorithm The Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA) is a Public-key cryptography, public-key cryptosystem and Federal Information Processing Standards, Federal Information Processing Standard for digital signatures, based on the mathematical concept of modular e ...

bearing his name. Besides this, Schnorr is known for his contributions to algorithmic information theory and for creating an approach to the definition of an

algorithmically random sequence Intuitively, an algorithmically random sequence (or random sequence) is a sequence of binary digits that appears random to any algorithm running on a (prefix-free or not) universal Turing machine. The notion can be applied analogously to sequenc ...

which is alternative to the concept of Martin-Löf randomness. Schnorr was a professor of mathematics and

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

at the

Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Goethe University (german: link=no, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main) is a university located in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. It was founded in 1914 as a citizens' university, which means it was founded and funded by the wealt ...

Frankfurt Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...

. He retired in 2011 after working there for 40 years. He is also a Distinguished Associate of RSA Laboratories, and a joint recipient of the

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize The Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize (german: link=no, Förderpreis für deutsche Wissenschaftler im Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz-Programm der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft), in short Leibniz Prize, is awarded by the German Research Foundation to ...

together with

Johannes Buchmann Johannes Alfred Buchmann (born November 20, 1953, in Cologne) is a German computer scientist, mathematician and professor emeritus at the department of computer science of the Technische Universität Darmstadt. He is known for his research in ...

in 1993. He received, with

Jean-Jacques Quisquater Jean-Jacques Quisquater (born 13 January 1945) is a Belgian cryptographer and a professor at University of Louvain (UCLouvain). He received, with Claus P. Schnorr, the RSA Award for Excellence in Mathematics in 2013, and the ESORICS Outstanding ...

, 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 ...

in 2013. Schnorr held a patent on

Schnorr signature In cryptography, a Schnorr signature is a digital signature produced by the Schnorr signature algorithm that was described by Claus Schnorr. It is a digital signature scheme known for its simplicity, among the first whose security is based on the ...

s until 2008.

References

Archived version of Schnorr's home page

External links

Schnorr's patent and its relation to DSA
20th-century German mathematicians Modern cryptographers Living people 1943 births International Association for Cryptologic Research fellows 21st-century German mathematicians German cryptographers {{compu-scientist-stub