Martin Edward Hellman (born October 2, 1945) is an American

cryptologist This is a list of cryptographers. Cryptography is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties called adversaries. Pre twentieth century * Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi: wrote a (now lost) bo ...

and mathematician, best known for his involvement with

public key cryptography Public-key cryptography, or asymmetric cryptography, is the field of cryptographic systems that use pairs of related keys. Each key pair consists of a public key and a corresponding private key. Key pairs are generated with cryptographic alg ...

in cooperation with

Whitfield Diffie Bailey Whitfield 'Whit' Diffie (born June 5, 1944), ForMemRS, is an American cryptographer and mathematician and one of the pioneers of public-key cryptography along with Martin Hellman and Ralph Merkle. Diffie and Hellman's 1976 paper ''New Dir ...

and

Ralph Merkle Ralph C. Merkle (born February 2, 1952) is a computer scientist and mathematician. He is one of the inventors of public-key cryptography, the inventor of cryptographic hashing, and more recently a researcher and speaker on cryonics. Contribution ...

. Hellman is a longtime contributor to the computer privacy debate, and has applied risk analysis to a potential failure of

nuclear deterrence Deterrence theory refers to the scholarship and practice of how threats or limited force by one party can convince another party to refrain from initiating some other course of action. The topic gained increased prominence as a military strategy ...

. Hellman was elected a member of the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy ...

in 2002 for contributions to the theory and practice of cryptography. In 2016, wrote a book with his wife, Dorothie Hellman, that links creating love at home to bringing peace to the planet (''A New Map for Relationships: Creating True Love at Home and Peace on the Planet'').

Early life

Born in New York to a

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

family, Hellman graduated from the

Bronx High School of Science The Bronx High School of Science, commonly called Bronx Science, is a public specialized high school in The Bronx in New York City. It is operated by the New York City Department of Education. Admission to Bronx Science involves passing the Spec ...

. He went on to take his

bachelor's degree A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six ...

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

from

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...

in 1966, and at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

he received a

master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice.

and a

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 ...

in the discipline in 1967 and 1969.

Career

From 1968 to 1969 he worked at IBM's

Thomas J. Watson Research Center The Thomas J. Watson Research Center is the headquarters for IBM Research. The center comprises three sites, with its main laboratory in Yorktown Heights, New York, U.S., 38 miles (61 km) north of New York City, Albany, New York and wit ...

Yorktown Heights, New York Yorktown Heights is a census-designated place (CDP) in the town of Yorktown in Westchester County, New York, United States. The population was 1,781 at the 2010 census. History Yorktown Heights is in the town of Yorktown, New York, in northern ...

, where he encountered

Horst Feistel Horst Feistel (January 30, 1915 – November 14, 1990) was a German-American cryptographer who worked on the design of ciphers at IBM, initiating research that culminated in the development of the Data Encryption Standard (DES) in the 1970s. The ...

. From 1969 to 1971, he was an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology 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 ...

. He joined

electrical engineering department in 1971 as an assistant professor and served on the full-time faculty for twenty-five years before taking

emeritus ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

status as a full professor in 1996.Martin Hellman's webpage at Stanford University http://www-ee.stanford.edu/~hellman

Public key cryptography

Hellman and

's paper ''New Directions in Cryptography'' was published in 1976. It introduced a radically new method of distributing

cryptographic 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 adve ...

keys, which went far toward solving one of the fundamental problems of cryptography, key distribution. It has become known as Diffie–Hellman key exchange, although Hellman has argued that it ought to be called Diffie-Hellman-Merkle key exchange because of Merkle's separate contribution. The article stimulated the development of a new class of encryption algorithms, known variously as public key encryption and

asymmetric encryption Public-key cryptography, or asymmetric cryptography, is the field of cryptographic systems that use pairs of related keys. Each key pair consists of a public key and a corresponding private key. Key pairs are generated with cryptographic al ...

. Hellman and Diffie were awarded the Marconi Fellowship and accompanying prize in 2000 for work on public-key cryptography and for helping make cryptography a legitimate area of academic research,Columbia University press release regarding Marconi Fellowship
/ref> and they were awarded the 2015

Turing Award The ACM A. M. Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science. It is generally recognized as the highest distinction in compu ...

for the same work.

Computer privacy debate

Hellman has been a longtime contributor to the computer privacy debate. He and Diffie were the most prominent critics of the short key size of the

Data Encryption Standard The Data Encryption Standard (DES ) is a symmetric-key algorithm for the encryption of digital data. Although its short key length of 56 bits makes it too insecure for modern applications, it has been highly influential in the advancement of cry ...

(DES) in 1975. An audio recording survives of their review of DES at Stanford in 1976 with Dennis Branstad of NBS and representatives of the

National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collecti ...

. Their concern was well-founded: subsequent history has shown not only that NSA actively intervened with IBM and NBS to shorten the key size, but also that the short key size enabled exactly the kind of massively parallel key crackers that Hellman and Diffie sketched out. In response to

RSA Security RSA Security LLC, formerly RSA Security, Inc. and doing business as RSA, is an American computer and network security company with a focus on encryption and encryption standards. RSA was named after the initials of its co-founders, Ron Rive ...

DES Challenges The DES Challenges were a series of brute force attack contests created by RSA Security to highlight the lack of security provided by the Data Encryption Standard. The Contests The first challenge began in 1997 and was solved in 96 days by the D ...

starting in 1997, brute force crackers were built that could break DES, making it clear that DES was insecure and obsolete. As of 2012, a $10,000 commercially available machine could recover a DES key in days. Hellman also served (1994–96) on the National Research Council's Committee to Study National Cryptographic Policy, whose main recommendations have since been implemented.

International security

Hellman has been active in researching international security since 1985.

Beyond War

Hellman was involved in the original

Beyond War Beyond War (distinct from World Beyond War) is a movement founded in 1984. It seeks to end war, on the premise that, in the broad view, the continued practice of war will ultimately lead to a global catastrophe. Aims Beyond War aims to end war by ...

movement, serving as the principal editor for the "BEYOND WAR: A New Way of Thinking" booklet.Richard Rathbun, Rick Roney, Louise Smith, Donna Richeson, Don Fitton, Craig Ritchey, "BEYOND WAR: A New Way of Thinking", (Editors: Martin Hellman, Craig Barnes, Al Braun, Pat Chandler, Jack Li, Mac Lawrence, Tom Lindsay, Tom Osborne, Chris Rich, Nancy Ritchey, Karen Stevens and Judie Swope.
PDF available free online
/ref>

Breakthrough

In 1987 more than 30 scholars came together to produce Russian and English editions of the book ''Breakthrough: Emerging New Thinking, Soviet and Western Scholars Issue a Challenge to Build a World Beyond War''. Anatoly Gromyko and Martin Hellman served as the chief editors. The authors of the book examine questions such as: How can we overcome the inexorable forces leading toward a clash between the United States and the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

? How do we build a common vision for the future? How can we restructure our thinking to synchronize with the imperative of our modern world?

Defusing the nuclear threat

Hellman's current project in international security is to defuse the nuclear threat. In particular, he is studying the probabilities and risks associated with

nuclear weapon A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions ( thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bom ...

s and encouraging further international research in this area. His websit
NuclearRisk.org
has been endorsed by a number of prominent individuals, including a former Director of the National Security Agency, Stanford's President Emeritus, and two Nobel Laureates. Hellman is a member of the Board of Directors for Daisy Alliance, a

non-governmental organization A non-governmental organization (NGO) or non-governmental organisation (see spelling differences) is an organization that generally is formed independent from government. They are typically nonprofit entities, and many of them are active in h ...

based in Atlanta, Georgia, seeking global security through nuclear

nonproliferation Nuclear proliferation is the spread of nuclear weapons, fissionable material, and weapons-applicable nuclear technology and information to nations not recognized as " Nuclear Weapon States" by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Wea ...

and

disarmament Disarmament is the act of reducing, limiting, or abolishing weapons. Disarmament generally refers to a country's military or specific type of weaponry. Disarmament is often taken to mean total elimination of weapons of mass destruction, such as ...

Awards and honors

In 1997 he was awarded

The Franklin Institute The Franklin Institute is a science museum and the center of science education and research in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is named after the American scientist and statesman Benjamin Franklin. It houses the Benjamin Franklin National Memori ...

's Louis E. Levy Medal, in 1981 the IEEE Donald G. Fink Prize Paper Award (together with

), in 2000, he won the Marconi Prize for his invention of public-key cryptography to protect privacy on the Internet, also together with Whit Diffie. In 1998, Hellman was a Golden Jubilee Award for Technological Innovation from the

IEEE Information Theory Society The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...

, and in 2010 the IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal. In 2011, he was inducted into the

National Inventors Hall of Fame The National Inventors Hall of Fame (NIHF) is an American not-for-profit organization, founded in 1973, which recognizes individual engineers and inventors who hold a U.S. patent of significant technology. Besides the Hall of Fame, it also oper ...

. Also in 2011, Hellman was made a Fellow of the

Computer History Museum The Computer History Museum (CHM) is a museum of computer history, located in Mountain View, California. The museum presents stories and artifacts of Silicon Valley and the information age, and explores the computing revolution and its impact on ...

for his work, with Whitfield Diffie and Ralph Merkle, on public key cryptography. Hellman won the

for 2015 together with

. The Turing award is widely considered the most prestigious award in the field of computer science. The citation for the award was: "''For fundamental contributions to modern cryptography. Diffie and Hellman's groundbreaking 1976 paper, "New Directions in Cryptography," introduced the ideas of

public-key cryptography Public-key cryptography, or asymmetric cryptography, is the field of cryptographic systems that use pairs of related keys. Each key pair consists of a public key and a corresponding private key. Key pairs are generated with cryptographic alg ...

and

digital signature A digital signature is a mathematical scheme for verifying the authenticity of digital messages or documents. A valid digital signature, where the prerequisites are satisfied, gives a recipient very high confidence that the message was created b ...

s, which are the foundation for most regularly-used security protocols on the internet today.''"

References

External links

Oral history interview with Martin Hellman
Oral history interview 2004, Palo Alto, California.

Charles Babbage Institute The IT History Society (ITHS) is an organization that supports the history and scholarship of information technology by encouraging, fostering, and facilitating archival and historical research. Formerly known as the Charles Babbage Foundation, ...

, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Hellman describes his invention of

with collaborators

and

at Stanford University in the mid-1970s. He also relates his subsequent work in cryptography with Steve Pohlig (the

Pohlig–Hellman algorithm In group theory, the Pohlig–Hellman algorithm, sometimes credited as the Silver–Pohlig–Hellman algorithm, Mollin 2006, pg. 344 is a special-purpose algorithm for computing discrete logarithms in a finite abelian group whose order is a smoot ...

) and others. Hellman addresses the

’s (NSA) early efforts to contain and discourage academic work in the field, the Department of Commerce’s encryption export restrictions (under the International Traffic of Arms Regulation, or ITAR), and key escrow (the so-called

Clipper chip The Clipper chip was a chipset that was developed and promoted by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) as an encryption device that secured "voice and data messages" with a built-in backdoor that was intended to "allow Federal, State, ...

). He also touches on the commercialization of cryptography with

RSA Data Security RSA Security LLC, formerly RSA Security, Inc. and doing business as RSA, is an American computer and network security company with a focus on encryption and encryption standards. RSA was named after the initials of its co-founders, Ron Rivest ...

and

VeriSign Verisign Inc. is an American company based in Reston, Virginia, United States that operates a diverse array of network infrastructure, including two of the Internet's thirteen root nameservers, the authoritative registry for the , , and gene ...

.
Martin Hellman's website on the risk of nuclear threat from nuclear war or nuclear terrorism"Defusing the nuclear threat and making the world safer"
Announcement of Hellman presentation at U.C. Santa Cruz; Oct. 2008

video with Hellman participating on the Cryptographer's Panel, April 21, 2009, Moscone Center, San Francisco * {{DEFAULTSORT:Hellman, Martin 1945 births Living people Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering American cryptographers Jewish American scientists IBM employees MIT School of Engineering faculty Stanford University School of Engineering faculty Public-key cryptographers Modern cryptographers The Bronx High School of Science alumni International Association for Cryptologic Research fellows Polytechnic Institute of New York University alumni Turing Award laureates IEEE Centennial Medal laureates Computer security academics Mathematicians from New York (state) Recipients of the Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana, 3rd Class Stanford University School of Engineering alumni