Uploaded January 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Turing Award recipient Martin Hellman discusses his career with Oxford Mathematician Dr Tom Crawford, including how he went to war with the NSA over public key cryptography and the Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange.
Recorded at the 2023 Heidelberg Laureate Forum. Find out more about the event at heidelberg-laureate-forum.org
The story begins in the 1960's and Martin's early work in cryptography at IBM Research. He meets Whitfield Diffie and in 1976 the Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange is created - allowing information to be sent securely online. As the field of cryptography is being developed, Martin faces opposition from the National Security Agency (NSA), but he refuses to back down. He explains his reasons for this, and how it was finally resolved.
In the 1980's Martin switched his focus to the nuclear threat and began working on educating the public on the risk of nuclear annihilation. More information can be found on his website: nuclearrisk.org
Seven years ago Martin published a book, co-authored with his wife, entitled "A new map for relationships: creating true love at home and peace on the planet". You can download the PDF version for free here: https://ee.stanford.edu/~hellman/publications/book3.pdf
The ACM A.M. Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) to "an individual selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community". The Turing Award is recognized as the "highest distinction in computer science" and "Nobel Prize of Computing". The award is named after Alan Mathison Turing, mathematician and reader in mathematics at the University of Manchester. From 2007 to 2013, the award was accompanied by a prize of US$250,000. Effective 2014, the funding level has been increased to US$1 million, i.e. four times the previous amount
Martin Hellman received the Turing Award in 2015 along with Whitfield Diffie for inventing and promulgating both asymmetric public-key cryptography, including its application to digital signatures, and a practical cryptographic key-exchange method.
Links to other videos and publications mentioned in the video are below.
HLF 10 - Lightning Talks: youtube.com/watch?v=euWWcuGdCwM
C. E. Shannon, "Communication theory of secrecy systems," in The Bell System Technical Journal, vol. 28, no. 4, pp. 656-715, Oct. 1949, doi: 10.1002/j.1538-7305.1949.tb00928.x.
WSJ Ukraine Poll: file:///Volumes/ElementsNEW/HLF10/Hellman/WSJ_NORC_Ukraine_Poll_June_2022.pdf
Links to Tom's other interviews with Laureates in Maths and Computer Science.
Whitfield Diffie: youtube.com/watch?v=UaanzpCkc8c
Lesley Lamport: youtube.com/watch?v=DPVvReKyhmw
Alessio Figalli: youtube.com/watch?v=Oob466Ia9f4
Martin Hairer: youtube.com/watch?v=Z6XP3n-Sjiw
Michael Atiyah: youtube.com/watch?v=alujy8SVIDM
Daniel Spielman: youtu.be/SVfabuPRkYg
Efim Zelmanov: youtu.be/Nz3_RzZzuO8
Produced by Dr Tom Crawford at the University of Oxford. Tom is Public Engagement Lead at the Oxford University Department of Continuing Education: conted.ox.ac.uk
For more maths content check out Tom's website tomrocksmaths.com
You can also follow Tom on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @tomrocksmaths. facebook.com/tomrocksmaths
twitter.com/tomrocksmaths
instagram.com/tomrocksmaths
Get your Tom Rocks Maths merchandise here:
beautifulequation.com/collections/tom-rocks-maths
With thanks to
Martin Hellman
Heidelberg Laureate Forum
Heidelberg Laureate Forum Foundation
IBM Research
MIT Museum
Chuck Painter/Stanford News Service
Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser
Roger Dudley
RTC at English Wikipedia
Turing Award recipient Martin Hellman discusses his career with Oxford Mathematician Dr Tom Crawford, including how he went to war with the NSA over public key cryptography and the Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange.
Recorded at the 2023 Heidelberg Laureate Forum. Find out more about the event at heidelberg-laureate-forum.org
The story begins in the 1960's and Martin's early work in cryptography at IBM Research. He meets Whitfield Diffie and in 1976 the Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange is created - allowing information to be sent securely online. As the field of cryptography is being developed, Martin faces opposition from the National Security Agency (NSA), but he refuses to back down. He explains his reasons for this, and how it was finally resolved.
In the 1980's Martin switched his focus to the nuclear threat and began working on educating the public on the risk of nuclear annihilation. More information can be found on his website: nuclearrisk.org
Seven years ago Martin published a book, co-authored with his wife, entitled "A new map for relationships: creating true love at home and peace on the planet". You can download the PDF version for free here: https://ee.stanford.edu/~hellman/publications/book3.pdf
The ACM A.M. Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) to "an individual selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community". The Turing Award is recognized as the "highest distinction in computer science" and "Nobel Prize of Computing". The award is named after Alan Mathison Turing, mathematician and reader in mathematics at the University of Manchester. From 2007 to 2013, the award was accompanied by a prize of US$250,000. Effective 2014, the funding level has been increased to US$1 million, i.e. four times the previous amount
Martin Hellman received the Turing Award in 2015 along with Whitfield Diffie for inventing and promulgating both asymmetric public-key cryptography, including its application to digital signatures, and a practical cryptographic key-exchange method.
Links to other videos and publications mentioned in the video are below.
HLF 10 - Lightning Talks: youtube.com/watch?v=euWWcuGdCwM
C. E. Shannon, "Communication theory of secrecy systems," in The Bell System Technical Journal, vol. 28, no. 4, pp. 656-715, Oct. 1949, doi: 10.1002/j.1538-7305.1949.tb00928.x.
WSJ Ukraine Poll: file:///Volumes/ElementsNEW/HLF10/Hellman/WSJ_NORC_Ukraine_Poll_June_2022.pdf
Links to Tom's other interviews with Laureates in Maths and Computer Science.
Whitfield Diffie: youtube.com/watch?v=UaanzpCkc8c
Lesley Lamport: youtube.com/watch?v=DPVvReKyhmw
Alessio Figalli: youtube.com/watch?v=Oob466Ia9f4
Martin Hairer: youtube.com/watch?v=Z6XP3n-Sjiw
Michael Atiyah: youtube.com/watch?v=alujy8SVIDM
Daniel Spielman: youtu.be/SVfabuPRkYg
Efim Zelmanov: youtu.be/Nz3_RzZzuO8
Produced by Dr Tom Crawford at the University of Oxford. Tom is Public Engagement Lead at the Oxford University Department of Continuing Education: conted.ox.ac.uk
For more maths content check out Tom's website tomrocksmaths.com
You can also follow Tom on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @tomrocksmaths. facebook.com/tomrocksmaths
twitter.com/tomrocksmaths
instagram.com/tomrocksmaths
Get your Tom Rocks Maths merchandise here:
beautifulequation.com/collections/tom-rocks-maths
With thanks to
Martin Hellman
Heidelberg Laureate Forum
Heidelberg Laureate Forum Foundation
IBM Research
MIT Museum
Chuck Painter/Stanford News Service
Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser
Roger Dudley
RTC at English Wikipedia
