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A.M. Turing Award
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Turing Award Given To Team Whose Work Spurred Secure E-Commerce, Email Services New York, April 14, 2003...ACM has named Drs. Ronald L. Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard M. Adleman as winners of the 2002 A.M. Turing Award, considered the "Nobel Prize of Computing," for their contributions to public key cryptography. As researchers at MIT in 1977, the team developed the RSA code, which has become the foundation for an entire generation of technology security products. It has also inspired important work in both theoretical computer science and mathematics. RSA is an algorithm - named for Drs. Rivest, Shamir and Adleman - that uses number theory to provide a pragmatic approach to secure transactions. It is today's most widely used encryption method, with applications in Internet browsers and servers, electronic transactions in the credit card industry, and products providing e-mail services. The Turing Award carries a $100,000 prize, with funding provided by Intel Corporation. The RSA scheme provides secure communications over distances between parties that have not previously met, reversing historical conventions that required the parties to exchange secret keys prior to communication. Because the new key exchange algorithm eliminated this inconvenient and often insecure step, it provided the ideal mechanism for private communications over electronic networks. The RSA code forms the basis for most security products now in use on the Internet for financial and other private communications. Dr. Robert E. Kahn, chairman, president and CEO of CNRI (Corporation for National Research Initiatives), headed the 2002 Turing Award committee. He said the committee rapidly converged on the choice of Drs. Rivest, Shamir and Adleman to be this year's honorees. "We had a large number of highly qualified candidates, but what impressed us was the combination of their theoretical contribution and its widespread practical application. They clearly deserved this recognition for their well-known seminal work in advancing the theory and application of public key cryptography," he said. The Turing Award committee's citation noted that the work of Drs. Rivest, Shamir and Adleman was "a significant advance in enabling secure communication among computers using public-key cryptography." It noted that the RSA system is used in email systems, web browsers, secure shells, virtual private networks, mobile phone, and in many other applications requiring the secure exchange of information. Intel's support has enabled ACM to increase the cash award this year from $25,000 to $100,000. "The Turing Award is widely recognized as our industry's highest recognition of the scientists and engineers whose innovations have fueled the digital revolution," said Intel Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice-President, Pat Gelsinger. "It serves another equally important role - to encourage the next generation of technology pioneers to deliver the ideas and inventions that will continue to drive our industry forward. As part of its long-standing support for innovation and incubation, Intel is proud to sponsor this year's award and I would personally like to congratulate the winners." RSA gained widespread attention when it was published in a detailed paper in Communications of the ACM in February 1978. Drs. Rivest, Shamir and Adleman shared the 1996 ACM Paris Kanallakis Award for Theory and Practice, together with Professors Whitfield Diffie, Martin Hellman and Ralph Merkle, who pioneered the concept of public-key cryptography. The Kanellakis Award honors specific theoretical accomplishments that have had a significant and demonstrable effect on the practice of computing. The Turing Award honors contributions of lasting and major technical importance to the computer field, and is ACM's most prestigious technical award. Dr. Rivest is the Viterbi Professor of Computer Science in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He is a founder of MIT's Cryptography and Information Security Group. He received a BA in Mathematics from Yale University and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University. Dr. Adi Shamir is the Borman Professor in the Applied Math Department of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. He received a BS in Mathematics from Tel-Aviv University and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Weizmann Institute. Dr. Leonard M. Adleman is Distinguished Henry Salvatori Professor of Computer Science and Professor of Molecular Biology at the University of Southern California. He earned a BS in Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science, also at Berkeley. ACM will present the A.M. Turing Award at the annual ACM Awards Banquet on June 7, 2003, at the Town and Country Conference Center in San Diego, CA, in conjunction with the Federated Computing Research Conference. The award was named for Alan. M. Turing, the British mathematician who articulated the mathematical foundation and limits of computing, and who was a key contributor to the Allied cryptanalysis of the German Enigma cipher during World War II. Since its inception in 1966, ACM's Turing Award has honored the computer scientists and engineers who created the systems and underlying theoretical foundations that have propelled the information technology industry. For more information, see acm.org/awards. SIDEBAR - Coincidence or Fate Dr. Leonard Adleman, a mathematician by training, has recently extended his professional interests to the biotechnology field. While reading a text on DNA a few years ago, he was struck by a resemblance between the way a protein, known as polymerase, produces complementary strands of DNA, and the principle behind the Turing machine, a computational model proposed in the 1930's by Alan M. Turing, for whom ACM's Turing Award is named. Like polymerase, which runs along a strand of DNA reading chemical information, the Turing machine runs along a tape reading digital information. Dr. Adleman concluded that DNA formation operates like a computer. He has since built a "DNA computer" that holds the potential for faster, more energy efficient computation in the future. About ACM The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a major force in advancing the skills of information technology professionals and students. ACM serves its global membership by delivering cutting edge technical information and transferring ideas from theory to practice. ACM hosts the computing industry's leading Portal to Computing Literature. With its world-class journals and magazines, dynamic special interest groups, numerous conferences, workshops and electronic forums, ACM is a primary resource to the information technology field. For additional information about ACM and the ACM Portal, see www.acm.org.
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