Adi Shamir Explained

Adi Shamir
Birth Date:6 July 1952
Birth Place:Tel Aviv, Israel
Field:Cryptography
Thesis Title:The fixedpoints of recursive definitions[1]
Thesis Year:1976
Work Institution:Weizmann Institute
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Alma Mater:Tel Aviv University
Weizmann Institute of Science
Doctoral Advisor:Zohar Manna
Doctoral Students:Eli Biham
Uriel Feige
Amos Fiat
Known For:RSA
Feige–Fiat–Shamir identification scheme
differential cryptanalysis

Adi Shamir (Hebrew: עדי שמיר; born July 6, 1952) is an Israeli cryptographer and inventor. He is a co-inventor of the Rivest–Shamir–Adleman (RSA) algorithm (along with Ron Rivest and Len Adleman), a co-inventor of the Feige–Fiat–Shamir identification scheme (along with Uriel Feige and Amos Fiat), one of the inventors of differential cryptanalysis and has made numerous contributions to the fields of cryptography and computer science.

Biography

Adi Shamir was born in Tel Aviv. He received a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree in mathematics from Tel Aviv University in 1973 and obtained an MSc and PhD in computer science from the Weizmann Institute in 1975 and 1977 respectively.He spent a year as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Warwick and did research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 1977 to 1980.

Scientific career

In 1980, he returned to Israel, joining the faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science at the Weizmann Institute. Starting from 2006, he is also an invited professor at École Normale Supérieure in Paris.

In addition to RSA, Shamir's other numerous inventions and contributions to cryptography include the Shamir secret sharing scheme, the breaking of the Merkle-Hellman knapsack cryptosystem, visual cryptography, and the TWIRL and TWINKLE factoring devices. Together with Eli Biham, he discovered differential cryptanalysis in the late 1980s, a general method for attacking block ciphers. It later emerged that differential cryptanalysis was already known — and kept a secret — by both IBM[2] and the National Security Agency (NSA).[3]

Shamir has also made contributions to computer science outside of cryptography, such as finding the first linear time algorithm for 2-satisfiability[4] and showing the equivalence of the complexity classes PSPACE and IP.

Awards and recognition

He was elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2019.

Notes and References

  1. Book: Shamir . Adi . The fixedpoints of recursive definitions . October 1976 . Weizmann Institute of Science . 884951223 . en.
  2. 10.1147/rd.383.0243 . Coppersmith . Don . May 1994 . The Data Encryption Standard (DES) and its strength against attacks . IBM Journal of Research and Development . 38 . 3 . 243–250 . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20070615132907/http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/rd/383/coppersmith.pdf . 2007-06-15 . (subscription required)
  3. Book: Levy, Steven . Steven Levy . Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government — Saving Privacy in the Digital Age . . 2001 . 0-14-024432-8 . 55–56 .
  4. .
  5. Web site: A. M. Turing Award . . . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20091212132624/http://awards.acm.org/homepage.cfm?srt=all&awd=140 . 2009-12-12 .
  6. Web site: ACM Award Citation / Adi Shamir . 2009-02-17 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20090406004638/http://awards.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=8526038&srt=all&aw=147&ao=KANELLAK . 2009-04-06 .
  7. Web site: IEEE W.R.G. Baker Prize Paper Award Recipients . . . dead . https://www.webcitation.org/5yCQiCmPi?url=http://www.ieee.org/documents/baker_rl.pdf . 2011-04-25 .
  8. Web site: Pius XI Medal. www.pas.va. 2019-02-21.
  9. Web site: IEEE Koji Kobayashi Computers and Communications Award Recipients . . . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20101124233804/http://ieee.org/documents/kobayashi_rl.pdf . 2010-11-24 .
  10. Web site: Israel Prize Official Site (in Hebrew) - Recipient's C.V. . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20120910075244/http://cms.education.gov.il/EducationCMS/Units/PrasIsrael/Tashsch/AdiShamir/CvAdiShamir.htm . 2012-09-10 .
  11. Web site: Israel Prize Official Site (in Hebrew) - Judges' Rationale for Grant to Recipient . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20120910072852/http://cms.education.gov.il/EducationCMS/Units/PrasIsrael/Tashsch/AdiShamir/NsAdiShamir.htm . 2012-09-10 .
  12. Web site: Presentation of the honorary degree at the Fall 2009 Convcation . . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20110924021934/https://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/co/research/files/award_files/AShamircitation.pdf . 2011-09-24 .
  13. Web site: Laureates of the Japan Prize. live. https://web.archive.org/web/20170204171819/http://www.japanprize.jp/en/prize_past_2017_prize01.html. 2017-02-04.
  14. Web site: Adi Shamir ForMemRS. royalsociety.org. Royal Society. London. 2018-07-22. Anon. 2018. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: