Name: Bailey Whitfield (Whit) Diffie

Born: June 5, 1944, in Washington, D.C.

  • American cryptographer and one of the pioneers of public-key cryptography.
  • In the early 1970s, Diffie worked with Martin Hellman to develop the fundamental ideas of dual-key or public key cryptography. They published their results in 1976—solving key distribution, one of the fundamental problems of cryptography. The solution has become known as Diffie-Hellman key exchange.
  • Currently serving as the vice president for Information Security and Cryptography at ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers).

Significant publications

  • Privacy on the Line co-authored with Susan Landau (1998).

Honors and awards

  • Kanellakis Award (1976).
  • Hamming Medal (2010).
  • Martin Hellman