List of cryptographers

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) book on cryptography titled the "Book of Cryptographic Messages".
• Al-Kindi, 9th century Arabic polymath and originator of frequency analysis.
• Athanasius Kircher, attempts to decipher crypted messages
• Augustus the Younger, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg
  , wrote a standard book on cryptography
• Ibn Wahshiyya: published several cipher alphabets that were used to encrypt magic formulas.^[1]
• John Dee, wrote an occult book, which in fact was a cover for crypted text
• Ibn 'Adlan
  : 13th-century cryptographer who made important contributions on the sample size of the frequency analysis.
• Duke of Mantua Francesco I Gonzaga is the one who used the earliest example of homophonic Substitution cipher in early 1400s.^[2][3]
• Ibn al-Durayhim: gave detailed descriptions of eight cipher systems that discussed substitution ciphers, leading to the earliest suggestion of a "tableau" of the kind that two centuries later became known as the "Vigenère table".
• Ahmad al-Qalqashandi
  : Author of Subh al-a 'sha, a fourteen volume encyclopedia in Arabic, which included a section on cryptology. The list of ciphers in this work included both substitution and transposition, and for the first time, a cipher with multiple substitutions for each plaintext letter.
• polyalphabetic substitution
  ciphers.
• polyalphabetic substitution (more specifically, the Alberti cipher
  ), and what may have been the first mechanical encryption aid.
• Giovanni Battista della Porta, author of a seminal work on cryptanalysis
  .
• Étienne Bazeries, French, military, considered one of the greatest natural cryptanalysts. Best known for developing the "Bazeries Cylinder" and his influential 1901 text Les Chiffres secrets dévoilés ("Secret ciphers unveiled").
• Giovan Battista Bellaso, Italian cryptologist
• Giovanni Fontana (engineer), wrote two encrypted books
• Hildegard of Bingen used her own alphabet to write letters.
• Julius Caesar, Roman general/politician, has the Caesar cipher named after him, and a lost work on cryptography by Probus (probably Valerius Probus) is claimed to have covered his use of military cryptography in some detail. It is likely that he did not invent the cipher named after him, as other substitution ciphers were in use well before his time.
• Kasiski test
  .
• Auguste Kerckhoffs, known for contributing cipher design principles.
• The Gold Bug
  , a short story featuring the use of letter frequencies in the solution of a cryptogram.
• polyalphabetic substitution. Wrote an early work on steganography
  and cryptography generally.
• William the Silent
  during the Dutch revolt against the Spanish.
• John Wallis codebreaker for Cromwell and Charles II
• Sir Charles Wheatstone, inventor of the so-called Playfair cipher and general polymath.

World War I and World War II wartime cryptographers

• Richard J. Hayes (1902-1976) Irish code breaker in World War II.
• Jean Argles (1925–2023), British code breaker in World War II
• Arne Beurling, Swedish mathematician and cryptograph.
• NSA
  , worked with William F. Friedman, taught NSA cryptanalysts.
• SIS, solved Japanese Army codes in World War II, later became deputy director of National Security Agency
  .
• Bletchley park
  during World War II.
• Biuro Szyfrow
  , helped to construct the Enigma machine copies to break the ciphers.
• Patricia Davies
  (born 1923), British code breaker in World War II
• GC&CS at Bletchley Park
  from 1919 to 1942.
• Agnes Meyer Driscoll, US, broke several Japanese ciphers.
• Purple
  .
• Elizebeth Smith Friedman, US, Coast Guard and US Treasury Department cryptographer, co-invented modern cryptography.^[4]
• SIS, introduced statistical methods into cryptography
  .
• Cecilia Elspeth Giles, UK, Bletchley Park
• GC&CS, Bletchley Park worked with Alan Turing
  on the statistical approach to cryptanalysis.
• Nigel de Grey, UK, Room 40, played an important role in the decryption of the Zimmermann Telegram during World War I.
• Enigma cipher as used by the Abwehr
  (German military intelligence).
• SIS, helped break the Japanese Red cipher, later Chief Scientist at the National Security Agency
  .
• Frank W. Lewis US, worked with William F. Friedman, puzzle master
• William Hamilton Martin and Bernon F. Mitchell, U.S. National Security Agency
  cryptologists who defected to the Soviet Union in 1960
• Leo Marks UK, SOE cryptography director, author and playwright.
• GC&CS, Bletchley Park worked on Cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher and the Colossus computer
  .
• Naval Applied Science Lab
• GC&CS, Bletchley Park headed the section that developed the Colossus computer for Cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher
  .
• First World War
  .
• Biuro Szyfrów, a Polish mathematician and cryptologist who, in 1932, solved the Enigma machine
  with plugboard, the main cipher device then in use by Germany. The first to break the cipher in history.
• JN-25 after the attack on Pearl Harbor
  .
• SIS, deduced that the Japanese Purple machine
  was built with stepping switches.
• Purple
  .
• Enigma
  ciphers.
• Luigi Sacco, Italy, Italian General and author of the Manual of Cryptography.
• Laurance Safford US, chief cryptographer for the US Navy for 2 decades+, including World War II.
• SIS
  .
• NSA
  . Extraordinary length and range of cryptographic service
• Computer Science
  .
• GC&CS, Bletchley Park, with John Tiltman, broke Lorenz SZ 40/42 encryption machine (codenamed Tunny) leading to the development of the Colossus computer
  .
• William Stone Weedon, US,
• decryption), made an important contribution to the design of the Bombe
  .
• Herbert Yardley US, MI8 (US), author "The American Black Chamber", worked in China as a cryptographer and briefly in Canada.
• Biuro Szyfrów, inventor of Zygalski sheets, broke German Enigma
  ciphers pre-1939.
• Karl Stein German, Head of the Division IVa (security of own processes) at Cipher Department of the High Command of the Wehrmacht. Discoverer of Stein manifold.
• predicate logic
  .
• Heinrich Scholz German, Worked in Division IVa at OKW. Logician and pen friend of Alan Turning.
• topological vector spaces
  .
• Ernst Witt German, Mathematician at OKW. Mathematical Discoveries Named After Ernst Witt.
• Grunsky inequalities
  .
• Georg Hamel.
• Oswald Teichmüller German, Temporarily employed at OKW as cryptanalyst. Introduced quasiconformal mappings and differential geometric methods into complex analysis. Described by Friedrich L. Bauer as an extreme Nazi and a true genius.
• Hans Rohrbach German, Mathematician at AA/Pers Z, the German department of state, civilian diplomatic cryptological agency.
• Wolfgang Franz German, Mathematician who worked at OKW. Later significant discoveries in Topology.
• Werner Weber German, Mathematician at OKW.
• Georg Aumann German, Mathematician at OKW. His doctoral student was Friedrich L. Bauer.
• Otto Leiberich German, Mathematician who worked as a linguist at the Cipher Department of the High Command of the Wehrmacht.
• Alexander Aigner German, Mathematician who worked at OKW.
• Erich Hüttenhain German, Chief cryptanalyst of and led Chi IV (section 4) of the Cipher Department of the High Command of the Wehrmacht. A German mathematician and cryptanalyst who tested a number of German cipher machines and found them to be breakable.
• Wilhelm Fenner German, Chief Cryptologist and Director of Cipher Department of the High Command of the Wehrmacht.
• Walther Fricke German, Worked alongside Dr Erich Hüttenhain at Cipher Department of the High Command of the Wehrmacht. Mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst and linguist.
• Fritz Menzer German. Inventor of SG39 and SG41.

Other pre-computer

• Rosario Candela, US, Architect and notable amateur cryptologist who authored books and taught classes on the subject to civilians at Hunter College.
• Claude Elwood Shannon, US, founder of information theory, proved the one-time pad
  to be unbreakable.

See also: Category:Modern cryptographers for a more exhaustive list.

Symmetric-key algorithm inventors

• Ross Anderson, UK, University of Cambridge, co-inventor of the Serpent cipher.
• Whirlpool hash function
  .
• George Blakley, US, independent inventor of secret sharing.
• Eli Biham, Israel, co-inventor of the Serpent cipher.
• MARS
  ciphers.
• Keccak which became SHA-3
  .
• Feistel networks and Lucifer
  cipher.
• Lars Knudsen, Denmark, co-inventor of the Serpent
  cipher.
• Ralph Merkle, US, inventor of Merkle trees.
• RIPEMD-160
  .
• Rijndael which became the Advanced Encryption Standard
  (AES).
• MIT, inventor of RC cipher series and MD algorithm series
  .
• Bruce Schneier, US, inventor of Blowfish and co-inventor of Twofish and Threefish.
• Xuejia Lai, CH, co-inventor of International Data Encryption Algorithm (IDEA).
• Weizmann Institute, inventor of secret sharing
  .

• RSA
  .
• David Chaum, US, inventor of blind signatures.
• RSA, a fact that remained secret until 1997 and so was unknown to Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman
  .
• Diffie-Hellman
  key-exchange protocol.
• Elgamal discrete log cryptosystem
  .
• zero-knowledge proofs, and of Semantic security
  .
• Diffie-Hellman
  key-exchange protocol.
• elliptic curve cryptography
  .
• elliptic curve
  technique.
• zero-knowledge proofs, and of Semantic security
  .
• elliptic curve cryptography
  .
• David Naccache, inventor of the Naccache–Stern cryptosystem and of the Naccache–Stern knapsack cryptosystem.
• Moni Naor, co-inventor the Naor–Yung encryption paradigm for CCA security.
• Private Information Retrieval, and proactive cryptosystems
  .
• Paillier encryption
  .
• Rabin encryption
  .
• RSA
  .
• RSA
  .
• Moti Yung, co-inventor of the Naor–Yung encryption paradigm for CCA security, of threshold cryptosystems, and proactive cryptosystems.

Cryptanalysts

• Joan Clarke, English cryptanalyst and numismatist best known for her work as a code-breaker at Bletchley Park during the Second World War.
• Ross Anderson, UK.
• Eli Biham, Israel, co-discoverer of differential cryptanalysis and Related-key attack.
• Matt Blaze, US.
• Dan Boneh, US, Stanford University.
• Niels Ferguson, Netherlands, co-inventor of Twofish and Fortuna.
• Ian Goldberg, Canada, University of Waterloo.
• Lars Knudsen, Denmark, DTU, discovered integral cryptanalysis
  .
• differential power analysis
  .
• Mitsuru Matsui, Japan, discoverer of linear cryptanalysis.
• UC Berkeley, co-discoverer of the slide and boomerang attacks
  .
• Xiaoyun Wang, the People's Republic of China, known for MD5 and SHA-1 hash function
  attacks.
• Alex Biryukov, University of Luxembourg, known for impossible differential cryptanalysis and slide attack.
• Moti Yung, Kleptography.

Algorithmic number theorists

• Daniel J. Bernstein, US, developed several popular algorithms, fought US government restrictions in Bernstein v. United States.
• Don Coppersmith, US
• Dorian M. Goldfeld, US. Along with Michael Anshel and Iris Anshel invented the Anshel–Anshel–Goldfeld key exchange and the Algebraic Eraser. They also helped found Braid Group Cryptography.

Theoreticians

• UCSD, co-proposer of the Random oracle
  model.
• Stanford
  .
• Gilles Brassard, Canada, Université de Montréal. Co-inventor of quantum cryptography.
• Claude Crépeau, Canada, McGill University.
• Weizmann Institute, author of Foundations of Cryptography
  .
• Shafi Goldwasser, US and Israel.
• MIT
  .
• UCLA
  .
• Charles Rackoff, co-discoverer of zero-knowledge proofs.
• Oded Regev, inventor of learning with errors.
• UC Davis, co-proposer of the Random oracle
  model.
• UCLA
  .
• Gustavus Simmons, US, Sandia, authentication theory.
• Moti Yung, US, Google.

Government cryptographers

• RSA
  .
• James H. Ellis, UK, GCHQ, secretly proved the possibility of asymmetric encryption.
• Lowell Frazer, US, National Security Agency
• Laura Holmes, US, National Security Agency
• Julia Wetzel, US, National Security Agency
• Malcolm Williamson, UK, GCHQ, secret inventor of the protocol later known as the Diffie–Hellman key exchange
  .

• Cryptography

References

External links

Look up cryptographer in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• List of cryptographers' home pages