Leonard Adleman (born December 31, 1945) is an American computer scientist. He is one of the creators of the RSA encryption algorithm, for which he received the 2002

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 ...

, often called the

Nobel prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...

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 ...

. He is also known for the creation of the field of DNA computing.

Biography

Leonard M. Adleman was born 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 ...

Leonard (Len) Max Adleman 2002 Recipient of the ACM Turing Award
Interviewed by Hugh Williams, August 18, 2016 amturing.acm.org family in

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

. His family had originally immigrated to the United States from modern-day

Belarus Belarus,, , ; alternatively and formerly known as Byelorussia (from Russian ). officially the Republic of Belarus,; rus, Республика Беларусь, Respublika Belarus. is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by ...

, from the

Minsk Minsk ( be, Мінск ; russian: Минск) is the capital and the largest city of Belarus, located on the Svislach (Berezina), Svislach and the now subterranean Nyamiha, Niamiha rivers. As the capital, Minsk has a special administrative stat ...

area. He grew up in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

and attended the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...

, where he received his B.A. degree in mathematics in 1968 and his Ph.D. degree in EECS in 1976. He was also the mathematical consultant on the movie ''

Sneakers Sneakers (also called trainers, athletic shoes, tennis shoes, gym shoes, kicks, sport shoes, flats, running shoes, or runners) are shoes primarily designed for sports or other forms of physical exercise, but which are now also widely used fo ...

''. In 1996, he became 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 of ...

for contributions to the theory of computation and cryptography. He is also a member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nat ...

. Adleman is also an amateur boxer and has sparred with James Toney.

Discovery

In 1994, his paper ''Molecular Computation of Solutions To Combinatorial Problems'' described the experimental use of DNA as a computational system. In it, he solved a seven-node instance of the

Hamiltonian Graph In the mathematical field of graph theory, a Hamiltonian path (or traceable path) is a path in an undirected or directed graph that visits each vertex exactly once. A Hamiltonian cycle (or Hamiltonian circuit) is a cycle that visits each vertex ...

problem, an NP-complete problem similar to the travelling salesman problem. While the solution to a seven-node instance is

trivial Trivia is information and data that are considered to be of little value. It can be contrasted with general knowledge and common sense. Latin Etymology The ancient Romans used the word ''triviae'' to describe where one road split or fork ...

, this paper is the first known instance of the successful use of DNA to compute an

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for performing ...

. DNA computing has been shown to have potential as a means to solve several other large-scale combinatorial search problems. Adleman is widely referred to as the Father of DNA Computing. In 2002, he and his research group managed to solve a 'nontrivial' problem using DNA computation. Specifically, they solved a 20-variable SAT problem having more than 1 million potential solutions. They did it in a manner similar to the one Adleman used in his seminal 1994 paper. First, a mixture of DNA strands logically representative of the problem's solution space was synthesized. This mixture was then operated upon algorithmically using biochemical techniques to winnow out the 'incorrect' strands, leaving behind only those strands that 'satisfied' the problem. Analysis of the nucleotide sequence of these remaining strands revealed 'correct' solutions to the original problem. He is one of the original discoverers of the

Adleman–Pomerance–Rumely primality test In computational number theory, the Adleman–Pomerance–Rumely primality test is an algorithm for determining whether a number is prime. Unlike other, more efficient algorithms for this purpose, it avoids the use of random numbers, so it is a dete ...

. Fred Cohen, in his 1984 paper, ''Experiments with Computer Viruses'' credited Adleman with coining the term "

computer virus A computer virus is a type of computer program that, when executed, replicates itself by modifying other computer programs and inserting its own code. If this replication succeeds, the affected areas are then said to be "infected" with a comput ...

". As of 2017, Adleman is working on the mathematical theory of Strata. He is a Computer Science professor at the University of Southern California.

Awards

For his contribution to the invention of the RSA cryptosystem, Adleman, along with Ron Rivest and Adi Shamir, has been a recipient of the 1996 Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award and the 2002

, often called the

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...

of Computer Science. Adleman was elected a Fellow of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

in 2006 and a 2021 ACM Fellow.

References

External links

Adleman's homepage

Turing Award Citation

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Adleman, Leonard American computer programmers American science writers American people of Belarusian-Jewish descent 1945 births Living people Modern cryptographers Public-key cryptographers Scientists from the San Francisco Bay Area Turing Award laureates University of Southern California faculty Writers from San Francisco Jewish scientists Jewish biologists UC Berkeley College of Engineering alumni Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences 20th-century American scientists 21st-century American scientists Computer security academics UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science alumni

Biography

Discovery

Awards

See also

References

External links