RSA
Netiva Caftori, Northeastern Illinois University**Weizmann Institute Professor Wins Computing "Nobel" Professor Adi Shamir of the Weizmann Institute of Science is one of the three recipients of the 2003 Turing Award, one of the most prestigious international awards in Computing Science, MA'ARIV reported. Shamir will share the prize with Ronald Rivets and Leonard Adelman. The three men, whose collaborative effort began in 1977 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, are rewarded for their contribution to the development of a method of coding based on a public key known as RSA. The code enables the transfer of coded messages and their decryption. The estimated time required to decrypt a message coded in RSA by an unauthorized party is thousands of years. The system has currently many applications - It is notable a part of the "smart cards" system used for satellite television reception.
Shamir, who works at the Weizmann Institute's Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, is the third Israeli to receive the award, which is considered to be the Nobel Prize of computer science. Previous Israeli laureates are Prof. Michael Rabin of the Hebrew University, who won in 1976, and Prof. Amir Pnueli, also from the Weizmann Institute, who won in 1996. The prizes will be awarded at a ceremony held in San Diego on June 7.
Updated 4/20/03
Last updated 1/6/07