Stuart Haber is an American

cryptographer 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 computer scientist, known for his contributions in cryptography and privacy-preserving technologies and widely recognized as the co-inventor of the

blockchain A blockchain is a type of distributed ledger technology (DLT) that consists of growing lists of records, called ''blocks'', that are securely linked together using cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a ...

. His 1991 paper "How to Time-Stamp a Digital Document”, co-authored with

W. Scott Stornetta Wakefield Scott Stornetta (born June 1959) is an American physicist and scientific researcher. His 1991 paper "How to Time-Stamp a Digital Document”, co-authored with Stuart Haber, won the 1992 Discover Award for Computer Software and is cons ...

, won the 1992 Discover Award for Computer Software and is considered to be one of the most important papers in the development of cryptocurrencies.

Education

Haber studied at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

, graduating

magna cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some So ...

in 1978 with a

B.A. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

in Mathematics. Haber earned his PhD at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

in 1987 under the advisement of

Zvi Galil Zvi Galil ( he, צבי גליל; born June 26, 1947) is an Israeli-American computer scientist and mathematician. Galil served as the President of Tel Aviv University from 2007 through 2009. From 2010 to 2019, he was the dean of the Georgia Instit ...

with a thesis titled ''Provably Secure Multi-party Cryptographic Computation: Techniques and Applications''.

Career

In 1987, Haber joined Bell Communications Research (Bellcore) as a research scientist. In 1989, Haber met

, his future scientific partner and collaborator, when Stornetta joined Bellcore. In 1994, Haber and Stornetta co-founded Surety Technologies, a spinoff of Bellcore. In 1995, Surety’s offering constituted the first commercial deployment of a

and is currently the oldest continuously running blockchain. Haber currently serves as a member of the advisory board for Kadena, a hybrid blockchain platform.

Contributions

Haber's research during his time at Bellcore, along with W. Scott Stornetta, is widely considered to be the foundation for

Bitcoin Bitcoin ( abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is a decentralized digital currency that can be transferred on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network. Bitcoin transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public distr ...

and other digital currencies. Haber and Stornetta are the most cited authors in

Satoshi Nakamoto Satoshi Nakamoto is the name used by the presumed pseudonymous person or persons who developed bitcoin, authored the bitcoin white paper, and created and deployed bitcoin's original reference implementation. As part of the implementation, Nakam ...

’s original Bitcoin white paper, of the eight citations, three reference their work. Their 1991 paper "How to Time-Stamp a Digital Document” is where they first describe a system called "

Blockchain A blockchain is a type of distributed ledger technology (DLT) that consists of growing lists of records, called ''blocks'', that are securely linked together using cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a ...

". In this study, Haber and Stornetta sought to create mechanisms to create digital time stamps, offering a solution for maintaining the integrity of digital records and ensuring that they could not be modified or manipulated. In 1992, Haber, Stornetta, and

Dave Bayer David Allen Bayer (born November 29, 1955) is an American mathematician known for his contributions in algebra and symbolic computation and for his consulting work in the movie industry. He is a professor of mathematics at Barnard College, Columbi ...

incorporated Merkle trees into their design, improving its efficiency by allowing many document certificates to be collected into one block.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Haber, Stuart American cryptographers American computer scientists Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Harvard College alumni Columbia University alumni