Charles Rackoff

Last updated
Charles Rackoff
Born26 November 1948 (1948-11-26) (age 74)
Alma mater Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Awards Gödel Prize (1993)
Scientific career
Fields Cryptology
Institutions University of Toronto
Doctoral students Richard Cleve

Charles Weill Rackoff is an American cryptologist. Born and raised in New York City, he attended MIT as both an undergraduate and graduate student, [1] and earned a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science in 1974. He spent a year as a postdoctoral scholar at INRIA in France.

Rackoff currently works at the University of Toronto. His research interests are in computational complexity theory. For some time now he has been specializing in cryptography and security protocols. In 1988, he collaborated with Michael Luby in a widely cited analysis of the Feistel cipher construction (one important result shown there is the construction of a strongly pseudo random permutation generator from a pseudo random function generator). Rackoff was awarded the 1993 Gödel Prize for his work on interactive proof systems and for being one of the co-inventors of zero-knowledge proofs. [2] [3] In 2011 he won the RSA Award for Excellence in Mathematics for his various contributions to cryptography.

Rackoff's controversial comments on the 2000 memorial for the victims of the Montreal Massacre were reported in the Canadian media. [4]

Selected publications

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References

  1. Charles Rackoff at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  2. "Gödel Prize". www.sigact.org. Archived from the original on 2010-07-16. Retrieved 2010-12-14.
  3. Computer Science: Prof. Rackoff
  4. "Professor criticizes Montreal massacre memorials". Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. 7 December 2000. Archived from the original on 29 August 2009.