Whitfield Diffie

Who is Whitfield Diffie?

Whitfield Diffie, who holds the position of Distinguished Engineer

at Sun Microsystems Laboratories is best known for his 1975 discovery

of the concept of public key cryptography, for which he was awarded a

Doctorate in Technical Sciences (Honoris Causa) by the Swiss Federal

Institute of Technology in 1992. For a dozen years prior to

assuming his present position in 1991, Diffie was Manager of Secure

Systems Research for Northern Telecom, functioning as the center of

expertise in advanced security technologies throughout the corporation.

Among his achievements in this position was the design of the key

management architecture for NT's PDSO security system for X.25 packet

networks. Diffie received a Bachelor of Science degree in

mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1965.

Prior to becoming interested in cryptography, he worked on the

development of the Mathlab symbolic manipulation system --- sponsored

jointly at Mitre and the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory --- and

later on proof of correctness of computer programs at Stanford

University. Since 1993, Diffie has worked largely in public

policy, in the area of cryptography. He has testified twice to the

House and twice to the Senate. His position --- in opposition to

limitations on the business and personal use of cryptography --- has

been the subject of articles in the New York Times Magazine, Wired,

Omini, and Discover. The subject has also been covered on the Discovery

Channel, Equinox TV in Britain, and the Japanese TV network NHK. Notariety

has provoked a number of awards, including: IEEE Information Theory

Society Best Paper Award for 1979, IEEE Donald E. Fink award for 1981,

the 1994 Pioneer Award, given by The Electronic Frontiers Foundation

for contribution to the quality of life in cyberspace, the 1996

National Computer Systems Security Award given jointly by NIST and NSA,

the 1997 Louis E. Levy Medal from the Franklin Institute in

Philadelphia, the First ACM Paris Kanellakis Award for contribution to

theory and practice in computer science, the IEEE Information Society

Golden Jubilee Award for invention of the Diffie-Hellman key exchange

protocol. Diffie is the co-author with Prof. Susan Landau of

the University of Massachusetts of the book Privacy on the Line: The

politics of wiretapping and encryption, which has won the Donald

McGannon Award for Social and Ethical Relevance in Communications

Policy Research and the IEEE-USA award for Distinguished Literary

Contributions Furthering Public Understanding of the Profession.