Today, ACM is proud to announce that Martin E. Hellman and Whitfield Diffie have received the 2015 ACM A.M. Turing Award! Diffie and Hellman’s contributions to the field of cryptography four decades ago were truly visionary. Their revolutionary paper “New Directions in Cryptography,” published in 1976, laid the framework for the concepts of public-key cryptography and digital signatures, which today are the most widely used security protocols on the Internet, protecting trillions of dollars of web-based financial transactions each day.
“Today, the subject of encryption dominates the media, is viewed as a matter of national security, impacts government-private sector relations, and attracts billions of dollars in research and development,” said ACM President Alexander L. Wolf. “After nearly 40 years, we see that [Diffie and Hellman’s] forecasts were remarkably prescient.”
The ACM Turing Award, named for British mathematician Alan M. Turing who was instrumental in deciphering the Enigma cipher during WWII, is given annually to individuals who have made transformative and enduring contributions to the field of computing. Often referred to as the “Nobel Prize of Computing,” the ACM A.M. Turing Award carries a $1 million prize with financial support from Google.