Ralph Merkle
More info
- Born
- Known for
- Merkle's Puzzles, the Merkle tree
- Nationality
- American
Invented public-key cryptography as an undergraduate, had the idea rejected by the course, and ended up outside the history books.
American computer scientist. As a Berkeley undergraduate in 1974 he described "Merkle's Puzzles" — a way for two parties to agree on a key over a channel that is being listened to. The project proposal was rejected by the course and the resulting paper was turned down by reviewers; it was not published until 1978, by which time Diffie–Hellman had gone first.
His 1979 doctoral thesis introduced the hash tree that now bears his name and that every blockchain and every version control system rests on. The Merkle–Hellman knapsack cryptosystem, his other major construction, was broken by Shamir. He then left cryptography for nanotechnology and cryonics.