29th June 2011, 7:00pm
The Story of Public-Key Cryptography – Its History, Evolution and Developments, Professor Peter Hill
Abstract
The talk will provide a brief background to the general principles of cryptography with an introduction to the significant historical aspects of symmetric-key cryptography and basic encryption techniques emphasising the important contributions of Vigenère and Claude Shannon, leading to the current Advanced Encryption Standard. It will also address the invention and principles of asymmetric-key encryption – so-called public-key cryptography (PKC), and the development of important schemes such as the Diffie-Hellman and RSA algorithms (hopefully without too much mathematics!). Finally, Peter will also cover the part played by GCHQ Cheltenham with their early invention of PKC, leading to the award and celebration of the 100th IEEE Milestone.
Peter Hill is currently Professor Emeritus & part-time Academic Consultant in the Department of Informatics & Systems Engineering at the UK Defence Academy, Shrivenham where he was latterly the departmental Director of Research. He has been associated with Shrivenham since 1970, having previously worked in the BBC Engineering Research Department. His interests are mainly in the areas of communication systems & signal processing and coding as applied to informatics & electronic systems capability.
Venue: St Joseph’s College, Ocatal Way, Swindon SN3 3LR
No charge is made to attend meetings and non-members are welcome.
