List of cryptographers.

Pre twentieth century[edit]

• Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi: wrote a (now lost) book on cryptography titled the "Book of Cryptographic Messages".
• Al-Kindi, 9th century Arabic polymath and originator of frequency analysis.
• Ibn Wahshiyya: published several cipher alphabets that were used to encrypt magic formulas.^[1]
• Ibn 'Adlan: 13th-century cryptographer who made important contributions on the sample size of the frequency analysis.
• Ibn al-Durayhim: gave detailed descriptions of eight cipher systems that discussed substitution ciphers, leading to the earliest suggestion of a "tableau" of the kind that two centuries later became known as the "Vigenère table".
• Ahmad al-Qalqashandi: Author of Subh al-a 'sha, a fourteen volume encyclopedia in Arabic, which included a section on cryptology. The list of ciphers in this work included both substitution and transposition, and for the first time, a cipher with multiple substitutions for each plaintext letter.
• Charles Babbage, UK, 19th century mathematician who, about the time of the Crimean War, secretly developed an effective attack against polyalphabetic substitution ciphers.
• Leone Battista Alberti, polymath/universal genius, inventor of polyalphabetic substitution (more specifically, the Alberti cipher), and what may have been the first mechanical encryption aid.
• Giovanni Battista della Porta, author of a seminal work on cryptanalysis.
• Étienne Bazeries, French, military, considered one of the greatest natural cryptanalysts. Best known for developing the "Bazeries Cylinder" and his influential 1901 text Les Chiffres secrets dévoilés ("Secret ciphers unveiled").
• Julius Caesar, Roman general/politician, has the Caesar cipher is named after him, and a lost work on cryptography by Probus (probably Valerius Probus) is claimed to have covered his use of military cryptography in some detail. It is likely that he did not invent the cipher named after him, as other substitution ciphers were in use well before his time.
• Friedrich Kasiski, author of the first published attack on the Vigenère cipher, now known as the Kasiski test.
• Auguste Kerckhoffs, known for contributing cipher design principles.
• Johannes Trithemius, mystic and first to describe tableaux (tables) for use in polyalphabetic substitution. Wrote an early work on steganography and cryptography generally.
• Philips van Marnix, lord of Sint-Aldegonde, deciphered Spanish messages for William the Silent during the Dutch revolt against the Spanish.
• John Wallis codebreaker for Cromwell and Charles II
• Sir Charles Wheatstone, inventor of the so-called Playfair cipher and general polymath.

World War I and World War II wartime cryptographers[edit]

• Lambros D. Callimahos, US, NSA, worked with William F. Friedman, taught NSA cryptanalysts.
• Alec Naylor Dakin, UK, Hut 4, Bletchley park during World War II.
• Ludomir Danielewicz, Poland, Biuro Szyfrow, helped to construct the Enigma machine copies to break the ciphers.
• Alastair Denniston, UK, director of GC&CS at Bletchley Park during World War II.
• Agnes Meyer Driscoll, US, broke several Japanese ciphers.
• William F. Friedman, US, SIS, introduced statistical methods into cryptography.
• Jack Good UK, GC&CS, Bletchley Park worked with Alan Turing on the statistical approach to cryptanalysis.
• Nigel de Grey, UK, Room 40, played an important role in the decryption of the Zimmermann Telegram during World War I.
• Dillwyn Knox, UK, Room 40 and GC&CS, broke commercial Enigma cipher as used by the Abwehr (German military intelligence).
• Solomon Kullback, SIS
• Frank W. Lewis, worked with William F. Friedman, puzzle master
• William Hamilton Martin and Bernon F. Mitchell, U.S. National Security Agency cryptologists who defected to the Soviet Union in 1960
• Leo Marks, SOE cryptography director, author and playwright.
• Donald Michie, GC&CS, Bletchley Park worked on Cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher and the Colossus computer.
• Max Newman, GC&CS, Bletchley Park headed the section that developed the Colossus computer for Cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher.
• Georges Painvin, broke the ADFGVX cipher during the First World War.
• Marian Rejewski, Poland, Biuro Szyfrów, a Polish mathematician and cryptologist who, in 1932, solved the Enigma machine with plugboard, the main cipher device then in use by Germany.
• John Joseph Rochefort, made major contributions to the break into JN-25 after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
• Frank Rowlett, SIS, leader of the team that broke Purple.
• Jerzy Różycki, Poland, Biuro Szyfrów, helped break German Enigma ciphers.
• Luigi Sacco, Italy, Italian General and author of the Manual of Cryptography.
• Laurance Safford, chief cryptographer for the US Navy for 2 decades+, including World War II.
• Abraham Sinkov, SIS.
• John Tiltman, Brigadier, Room 40, GC&CS, Bletchley Park, GCHQ, NSA. Extraordinary length and range of cryptographic service
• Alan Mathison Turing, GC&CS, Bletchley Park where he was chief cryptographer, inventor of the Bombe that was used in decrypting Enigma, mathematician, logician, and renowned pioneer of Computer Science.
• William Thomas Tutte, GC&CS, Bletchley Park, with John Tiltman, broke Lorenz SZ 40/42 encryption machine (codenamed Tunny) leading to the development of the Colossus computer.
• William Stone Weedon,
• Gordon Welchman, GC&CS, Bletchley Park where he was head of Hut Six (German Army and Air Force Enigma cipher. decryption), he made an important contribution to the design of the Bombe.
• Herbert Yardley, MI8 (US), author "The American Black Chamber", worked in China as a cryptographer and briefly in Canada.
• Henryk Zygalski, Poland, Biuro Szyfrów, helped break German Enigma ciphers.
• Karl Stein - Head of the Division IVa (security of own processes) at Cipher Department of the High Command of the Wehrmacht. Discoverer of Stein manifold.
• Gisbert Hasenjaeger - Tester of the Enigma. Discovered new proof of the completeness theorem of Kurt Gödel for predicate logic.
• Heinrich Scholz - Worked in Division IVa at OKW. Logician and pen friend of Alan Turning.
• Gottfried Köthe - Cryptanalyst at OKW. Mathematician created theory of Topological Vector Spaces.
• Ernst Witt - Mathematician at OKW. Mathematical Discoveries Named After Ernst Witt.
• Helmut Grunsky - He worked in complex analysis and geometric function theory. He introduced Grunsky's theorem and the Grunsky inequalities.
• Georg Hamel.
• Oswald Teichmüller - Temporarily employed at OKW as cryptanalyst. Introduced quasiconformal mappings and differential geometric methods into complex analysis. Described by Friedrich L. Bauer as an extreme Nazi and a true genius.
• Hans Rohrbach - Mathematician at AA/Pers Z, the German department of state, civilian diplomatic cryptological agency.
• Wolfgang Franz - Mathematician who worked at OKW. Later significant discoveries in Topology.
• Werner Weber - Mathematician at OKW.
• Georg Aumann - Mathematician at OKW. His doctoral student was Friedrich L. Bauer.
• Otto Leiberich - Mathematician who worked as a linguist at the Cipher Department of the High Command of the Wehrmacht.
• Alexander Aigner - Mathematician who worked at OKW.
• Erich Hüttenhain, Chief cryptanalyst of and led Chi IV (section 4) of the Cipher Department of the High Command of the Wehrmacht. A German mathematician and cryptanalyst who tested a number of German cipher machines and found them to be breakable.
• Wilhelm Fenner, Chief Cryptologist and Director of Cipher Department of the High Command of the Wehrmacht.
• Walther Fricke, Worked alongside Dr Erich Hüttenhain at Cipher Department of the High Command of the Wehrmacht. Mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst and linguist.

Other pre-computer[edit]

• Rosario Candela, US, Architect and notable amateur cryptologist who authored books and taught classes on the subject to civilians at Hunter College.
• Elizebeth Friedman, US, Coast Guard and US Treasury Department cryptographer.
• Claude Elwood Shannon, US, founder of information theory, proved the one-time pad to be unbreakable.

Modern[edit]

See also: Category:Modern cryptographers for an exhaustive list.

Symmetric-key algorithm inventors[edit]

• Ross Anderson, UK, University of Cambridge, co-inventor of the Serpent cipher.
• Paulo S. L. M. Barreto, Brazilian, University of São Paulo, co-inventor of the Whirlpool hash function.
• George Blakley, US, independent inventor of secret sharing.
• Eli Biham, Israel, co-inventor of the Serpent cipher.
• Don Coppersmith, co-inventor of DES and MARS ciphers.
• Joan Daemen, Belgian, co-developer of Rijndael which became the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), and Keccak which became SHA-3.
• Horst Feistel, German, IBM, namesake of Feistel networks and Lucifer cipher.
• Lars Knudsen, Denmark, co-inventor of the Serpent cipher.
• Ralph Merkle, US, inventor of Merkle trees.
• Bart Preneel, Belgian, co-inventor of RIPEMD-160.
• Vincent Rijmen, Belgian, co-developer of Rijndael which became the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES).
• Ronald L. Rivest, US, MIT, inventor of RC cipher series and MD algorithm series.
• Bruce Schneier, US, inventor of Blowfish and co-inventor of Twofish and Threefish.
• Adi Shamir, Israel, Weizmann Institute, inventor of secret sharing.

Asymmetric-key algorithm inventors[edit]

Whitfield Diffie, Martin Hellman, Ronald Rivest, and Adi Shamir at RSA 2008

• Leonard Adleman, US, USC, the 'A' in RSA.
• David Chaum, US, inventor of blind signatures.
• Clifford Cocks, UK GCHQ first inventor of RSA, a fact that remained secret until 1997 and so was unknown to Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman.
• Whitfield Diffie, US, (public) co-inventor of the Diffie-Hellman key-exchange protocol.
• Taher Elgamal, US (born Egyptian), inventor of the Elgamal discrete log cryptosystem.
• Shafi Goldwasser, US and Israel, MIT and Weizmann Institute, co-discoverer of zero-knowledge proofs.
• Martin Hellman, US, (public) co-inventor of the Diffie-Hellman key-exchange protocol.
• Neal Koblitz, independent co-creator of elliptic curve cryptography.
• Alfred Menezes, co-inventor of MQV, an elliptic curve technique.
• Silvio Micali, US (born Italian), MIT, co-discoverer of zero-knowledge proofs.
• Victor Miller, independent co-creator of elliptic curve cryptography.
• David Naccache, inventor of the Naccache–Stern cryptosystem and of the Naccache–Stern knapsack cryptosystem.
• Moni Naor, co-inventor the Naor-Yung encryption paradigm for CCA security.
• Tatsuaki Okamoto, co-creator of de:Okamoto-Uchiyama-Kryptosystem
• Pascal Paillier, inventor of Paillier encryption.
• Michael O. Rabin, Israel, inventor of Rabin encryption.
• Ronald L. Rivest, US, MIT, the 'R' in RSA.
• Adi Shamir, Israel, Weizmann Institute, the 'S' in RSA.
• Shigenori Uchiyama, co-creator of de:Okamoto-Uchiyama-Kryptosystem.
• Moti Yung, co-inventor the Naor-Yung encryption paradigm for CCA security.

Cryptanalysts[edit]

• Ross Anderson, UK.
• Eli Biham, Israel, co-discoverer of differential cryptanalysis and Related-key attack.
• Matt Blaze, US.
• Dan Boneh, US, Stanford University.
• Niels Ferguson, Netherlands, co-inventor of Twofish and Fortuna.
• Ian Goldberg, US.
• Lars Knudsen, Denmark, DTU, discovered integral cryptanalysis.
• Paul Kocher, US, discovered differential power analysis.
• Mitsuru Matsui, Japan, discoverer of linear cryptanalysis.
• David Wagner, US, UC Berkeley, co-discoverer of the slide and boomerang attacks.
• Xiaoyun Wang, the People's Republic of China, known for MD5 and SHA-1 hash function attacks.
• Willi Meier, Switzerland, known for correlation attack, algebraic attack stream cipher and hash function.
• Alex Biryukov, University of Luxembourg, known for impossible differential cryptanalysis and slide attack.
• Moti Yung, Kleptography.

Algorithmic number theorists[edit]

• Daniel J. Bernstein, US, known for battle with US government in Bernstein v. United States.
• Don Coppersmith, US

Theoreticians[edit]

• Mihir Bellare, US, UCSD, co-proposer of the Random oracle model.
• Dan Boneh, US, Stanford.
• Gilles Brassard, Canada, Université de Montréal. Co-inventor of quantum cryptography.
• Claude Crépeau, Canada, McGill University.
• Oded Goldreich, Israel, Weizmann Institute, author of Foundations of Cryptography.
• Shafi Goldwasser, US and Israel.
• Silvio Micali, US.
• Rafail Ostrovsky, US, UCLA.
• Charles Rackoff, co-discoverer of zero-knowledge proofs.
• Phillip Rogaway, US, UC Davis, co-proposer of the Random oracle model.
• Amit Sahai, US, UCLA.
• Gustavus Simmons, US, Sandia, authentication theory.
• Moti Yung, US, Google.

Government cryptographers[edit]

• Clifford Cocks, UK, GCHQ, secret inventor of the algorithm later known as RSA.
• James H. Ellis, UK, GCHQ, secretly proved the possibility of asymmetric encryption.
• Malcolm Williamson, UK, GCHQ, secret inventor of the protocol later known as Diffie-Hellman.

Cryptographer businesspeople[edit]

• Bruce Schneier, US, CTO and founder of Counterpane Internet Security, Inc. and cryptography author.
• Scott Vanstone, Canada, founder of Certicom and elliptic curve cryptography proponent.
• Chuck Easttom, US, author,^[2][3][4] cryptography researcher/trainer,^[5][6] and creator of the EC-Council CAST 615 Cryptography training course ^[7][8] and creator of the EC-Council Certified Encryption Specialist (ECES)course/test ^[9]

See also[edit]

• Cryptography

References[edit]

External links[edit]

• List of cryptographers' home pages