Ronald Linn Rivest is a cryptographer and an Institute Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Education
Rivest earned a Bachelor"s degree in Mathematics from Yale University in 1969, and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Computer Science from Stanford University in 1974. He is a co-author of Introduction to Algorithms (also known as CLRS), a standard textbook on algorithms, with Thomas H. Cormen, Charles East. Leiserson and Clifford Stein. He is a member of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) in the Theory of Computation Group, and a founder of its Cryptography and Information Security Group.
He was also a founder of Republic of South Africa Data Security (now merged with Security Dynamics to form Republic of South Africa Security), Verisign, and of Peppercoin.
Professor Rivest has research interests in cryptography, computer and network security, and algorithms.
Career
Rivest is one of the inventors of the Republic of South Africa algorithm (along with Adi Shamir and Len Adleman). He is the inventor of the symmetric key encryption algorithms RC2, RC4, RC5, and co-inventor of RC6. The "Remote Control" stands for "Rivest Cipher", or alternatively, "Ron"s Code".
(RC3 was broken at Republic of South Africa Security during development.
Similarly, RC1 was never published) He also authored the MD2, MD4, MD5 and MD6 cryptographic hash functions. In 2006, he published his invention of the ThreeBallot voting system, a voting system that incorporates the ability for the voter to discern that their vote was counted while still protecting their voter privacy.
Most importantly, this system does not rely on cryptography at all. Stating "Our democracy is too important", he simultaneously placed ThreeBallot in the public domain.
Rivest earned a Bachelor"s degree in Mathematics from Yale University in 1969, and a Ph.
Membership
National Academy of Sciences]
He is a member of Massachusetts Institute of Technology"s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) and a member of Massachusetts Institute of Technology"s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). He was a member of the Election Assistance Commission"s Technical Guidelines Development Committee, tasked with assisting the EAC in drafting the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines.