Scott Vanstone
Scott Vanstone | |
---|---|
Born | Scott Alexander Vanstone September 14, 1947 |
Died | 2 March 2014 Milton, Ontario, Canada | (aged 66)
Nationality | Canadian |
Occupation(s) | Mathematician, Cryptographer |
Known for | Elliptic Curve Cryptography founder of Certicom |
Awards | RSA Award for Excellence in Mathematics Catalyst Award for Lifetime Achievement in Innovation |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | University of Waterloo |
Doctoral advisor | Ron Mullin |
Academic work | |
Institutions | University of Waterloo Certicom |
Doctoral students | Paul van Oorschot Alfred Menezes |
Scott A. Vanstone was a mathematician and cryptographer in the University of Waterloo Faculty of Mathematics. He was a member of the school's Centre for Applied Cryptographic Research, and was also a founder of the cybersecurity company Certicom. He received his PhD in 1974 at the University of Waterloo, and for about a decade worked principally in combinatorial design theory, finite geometry, and finite fields. In the 1980s he started working in cryptography.[1]: 287 An early result of Vanstone (joint with Ian Blake, R. Fuji-Hara, and Ron Mullin) was an improved algorithm for computing discrete logarithms in binary fields,[2] which inspired Don Coppersmith to develop his famous exp(n^{1/3+ε}) algorithm (where n is the degree of the field).[3]
Vanstone was one of the first
Vanstone authored or coauthored five widely used books and almost two hundred research articles, and he held several patents.[1]: 292–299 He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a Fellow of the International Association for Cryptologic Research. In 2001 he won the RSA Award for Excellence in Mathematics,[4] and in 2009 he received the Ontario Premier's Catalyst Award for Lifetime Achievement in Innovation.[3]
He died on March 2, 2014, shortly after a cancer diagnosis.[5][6]
Bibliography
- van Oorschot, Paul; Vanstone, Scott A. (1989). An Introduction to Error Correctng Codes with Applications. Kluwer Academic Publishers. ISBN 9780792390176.
- Blake, Ian; Gao, Shuhong; Menezes, Alfred J.; Mullin, Ron; Vanstone, Scott A.; Yaghoobian, Tomik (1993). Applications of Finite Fields. ISBN 0-7923-9282-5.
- Menezes, Alfred J.; van Oorschot, Paul; Vanstone, Scott A. (1996). Handbook of Applied Cryptography. ISBN 0-8493-8523-7.
- Hankerson, D.; Vanstone, S.; S2CID 720546.
- Gilbert, William J.; Vanstone, Scott A. (2005). Introduction to Mathematical Thinking: Algebra and Number Systems. Pearson Prentice Hall. ISBN 9780131848689.
See also
References
Notes
- ^
- doi:10.1137/0605029
- ^ a b "Prof. Scott Vanstone, FRSC, FIACR, 1947-2014". Retrieved 9 April 2018.
- ^ "Certicom Founder Receives Security Award for Mathematics from RSA". Retrieved 9 April 2018.
- ^ "In Memory of Scott Alexander Vanstone". J. Scott Early funeral home web site. Archived from the original on March 4, 2014.
- ISSN 1573-7586.