Martin Hellman

Born in New York to a Jewish family,Universities should restore spiritual side, says Professor Martin Hellman, NEWS RELEASE, 11/28/95 Hellman graduated from the Bronx High School of Science. He went on to take his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from New York University in 1966, and at Stanford University he received a master's degree and a Ph.D. in the discipline in 1967 and 1969.{{cite thesis |degree=PhD |first=Martin|last=Hellman |title=Learning with Finite Memory |publisher=Stanford University |date=1969 |author-link=Martin Hellman|id={{ProQuest|302464730}}}}

From 1968 to 1969 he worked at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York, where he encountered Horst Feistel. From 1969 to 1971, he was an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined Stanford University electrical engineering department in 1971 as an assistant professor and served on the full-time faculty for twenty-five years before taking emeritus status as a full professor in 1996.Martin Hellman's webpage at Stanford University http://www-ee.stanford.edu/~hellman

Hellman and Whitfield Diffie's paper New Directions in Cryptography was published in 1976. It introduced a radically new method of distributing cryptographic keys, which went far toward solving one of the fundamental problems of cryptography, key distribution.{{Cite journal|last1=Diffie|first1=Whitfield|last2=Hellman|first2=Martin|date=1976-11-01|title=New directions in cryptography|url=https://www-ee.stanford.edu/~hellman/publications/24.pdf|journal=IEEE Transactions on Information Theory|volume=22|issue=6|pages=644–654|doi=10.1109/TIT.1976.1055638|issn=0018-9448|citeseerx=10.1.1.37.9720}} 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. 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,[http://www.columbia.edu/cu/record/archives/vol26/vol26_iss4/2604_Marconi_Honors_Investors.html Columbia University press release regarding Marconi Fellowship] and they were awarded the 2015 Turing Award for the same work.

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 (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.{{cite web |url=http://www.toad.com/des-stanford-meeting.html |title=DES (Data Encryption Standard) Review at Stanford University |year=1976 |access-date=2012-03-20 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120503083539/http://www.toad.com/des-stanford-meeting.html |archive-date=2012-05-03 |url-status=dead }} 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's DES Challenges 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.{{citation needed|date=January 2017}}

Hellman also served (1994–96) on the National Research Council's Committee to Study National Cryptographic Policy, whose main recommendations have since been implemented.

Hellman has been active in researching international security since 1985.

Hellman was involved in the original Beyond War 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.) [http://traubman.igc.org/bwthinking.pdf PDF available free online]

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? 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?

[http://www-ee.stanford.edu/~hellman/Breakthrough/ Breakthrough website page]

Anatoly Gromyko, Martin Hellman, Craig Barnes, Alexander Nikitin, Donald Fitton, Sergei Kapitza, Elena Loshchenkova, William McGlashan, Andrei Melville, Harold Sandler, Olivia Simantob, "Breakthrough: Emerging New Thinking", Walker and Company, {{ISBN|0-8027-1026-3}}, {{ISBN|0-8027-1015-8}} and published simultaneously in the Soviet Union by Progress Publishing Company, Moscow. [http://www-ee.stanford.edu/~hellman/ Martin Hellman's Stanford website page], [http://www-ee.stanford.edu/~hellman/Breakthrough/book/pdfs/breakthrough.pdf PDF online free]

{{BLP sources|date=June 2017|section}}

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 weapons and encouraging further international research in this area. His website [http://NuclearRisk.org 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 based in Atlanta, Georgia, seeking global security through nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament.

In 1980, Martin Hellman was elevated to the grade of IEEE fellow for contribution to cryptography.

{{Cite web|

url=https://www.comsoc.org/membership/ieee-fellows/1980|

title = IEEE Fellows 1980 | IEEE Communications Society}}

In 1997 he was awarded The Franklin Institute's Louis E. Levy Medal,{{cite web |url=http://www.fi.edu/winners/show_results.faw?gs=&ln=&fn=&keyword=&subject=&award=LEVY+&sy=1923&ey=1999&name=Submit |title=Franklin Laureate Database – Louis E. Levy Medal Laureates |publisher=Franklin Institute |access-date=January 22, 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110629195033/http://www.fi.edu/winners/show_results.faw?gs=&ln=&fn=&keyword=&subject=&award=LEVY+&sy=1923&ey=1999&name=Submit |archive-date=June 29, 2011 }} in 1981 the IEEE Donald G. Fink Prize Paper Award (together with Whitfield Diffie),{{cite web|url = http://www.ieee.org/documents/fink_rl.pdf |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20101124231931/http://ieee.org/documents/fink_rl.pdf |url-status = dead |archive-date = November 24, 2010 |title=IEEE Donald G. Fink Prize Paper Award Recipients |publisher=IEEE |access-date=January 2, 2011}} 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.{{Cite web|url=http://marconisociety.org/fellows/martin-e-hellman/|title=Martin E. Hellman – Awarded the Marconi Prize in 2000|website=Marconi Society|date=26 October 2000|language=en-US}} In 1998, Hellman was a Golden Jubilee Award for Technological Innovation from the IEEE Information Theory Society,{{cite web|url=http://www.itsoc.org/honors/golden-jubilee-awards-for-technological-innovation |title=Golden Jubilee Awards for Technological Innovation |publisher=IEEE Information Theory Society |access-date=July 14, 2011}} and in 2010 the IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal.{{cite web|url = http://www.ieee.org/documents/hamming_rl.pdf |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20100620000223/http://ieee.org/documents/hamming_rl.pdf |url-status = dead |archive-date = June 20, 2010 |title=IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal Recipients |publisher=IEEE |access-date=January 22, 2011}}

In 2011, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.{{cite web |url=http://www.invent.org/2011induction/1_3_11_induction_hellman.asp |title=Meet the 2011 National Inventors Hall of Fame Inductees – Martin Hellman |publisher=National Inventors Hall of Fame |access-date=May 5, 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120904082305/http://www.invent.org/2011induction/1_3_11_induction_hellman.asp |archive-date=September 4, 2012 }}

Also in 2011, Hellman was made a Fellow of the Computer History Museum for his work, with Whitfield Diffie and Ralph Merkle, on public key cryptography.{{cite web

|url = http://www.computerhistory.org/fellowawards/hall/bios/Martin,Hellman/

|title = Martin Hellman

|publisher = Computer History Museum

|access-date = 2013-05-23

|url-status = dead

|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20130509235730/http://www.computerhistory.org/fellowawards/hall/bios/Martin,Hellman/

|archive-date = 2013-05-09

}}

Hellman won the Turing Award for 2015 together with Whitfield Diffie. 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 and digital signatures, which are the foundation for most regularly-used security protocols on the internet today."{{cite web

|url=http://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/diffie_8371646.cfm|title=Cryptography Pioneers Receive 2015 ACM A.M. Turing Award| publisher=ACM}}

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• [http://purl.umn.edu/107353 Oral history interview with Martin Hellman] Oral history interview 2004, Palo Alto, California. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Hellman describes his invention of public key cryptography with collaborators Whitfield Diffie and Ralph Merkle at Stanford University in the mid-1970s. He also relates his subsequent work in cryptography with Steve Pohlig (the Pohlig–Hellman algorithm) and others. Hellman addresses the National Security Agency’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). He also touches on the commercialization of cryptography with RSA Data Security and VeriSign.
• [http://nuclearrisk.org/ Martin Hellman's website on the risk of nuclear threat from nuclear war or nuclear terrorism]
• [http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/news/event?ID=1512 "Defusing the nuclear threat and making the world safer"] Announcement of Hellman presentation at U.C. Santa Cruz; Oct. 2008
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20090428195928/http://media.omediaweb.com/rsa2009/preview/webcast.htm?id=1_5 Hellman at the 2009 RSA conference], video with Hellman participating on the Cryptographer's Panel, April 21, 2009, Moscone Center, San Francisco
• {{YouTube|D1xnM3bbkCg|Soaring, Cryptography and Nuclear Weapons}}

{{Kanellakis Award laureates}}

{{Richard W. Hamming Medal recipients}}

{{Turing Award laureates}}

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Category:1945 births

Category:Living people

Category:Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering

Category:American cryptographers

Category:Jewish American scientists

Category:IBM employees

Category:MIT School of Engineering faculty

Category:Stanford University School of Engineering faculty

Category:Public-key cryptographers

Category:The Bronx High School of Science alumni

Category:International Association for Cryptologic Research fellows

Category:Polytechnic Institute of New York University alumni

Category:Turing Award laureates

Category:IEEE Centennial Medal laureates

Category:American computer security academics

Category:Mathematicians from New York (state)

Category:Recipients of the Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana, 3rd Class

Category:Stanford University School of Engineering alumni