Whitfield Diffie
American cryptographer · United States · On the map · Academics · Born 1944 · age 82
Bailey Whitfield 'Whit' Diffie ForMemRS is an American cryptographer and mathematician and one of the pioneers of public-key cryptography along with Martin Hellman and Ralph Merkle.
Whitfield Diffie is read about 101 times a day, in 33 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 6 November 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 104 days, one point a day.
Something wrong?A life in dates
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Diffie and Hellman's 1976 paper New Directions in Cryptography introduced a radically new method of distributing cryptographic keys, that helped solve key distribution - a fundamental problem in cryptography. Their technique became known as Diffie-Hellman key exchange. The article stimulated the almost immediate public development of a new class of encryption algorithms, the asymmetric key algorithms.
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The same award as Whitfield
Leonard AdlemanBoth received National Cyber Security Hall of Fame
Kenneth BainbridgeBoth received Louis E. Levy Medal of the Franklin Institute
Adi ShamirBoth received National Cyber Security Hall of FameAllen NewellBoth received Louis E. Levy Medal of the Franklin Institute