My Computer Science Heroes
I used to be an electrical engineer, and my heroes were … Maxwell, Faraday, and Ohm, and in electronics it was Kilby and Shockley. Virtually everyone who ever studied the subjects knew of their work, and the built the pillars on which the subjects stood. But the minute I saw a transistor — and its crazy npn structure — I knew my future was in the computer industry.
But, in cyber security, you don’t see the general consensus of the great people who created the area and who built significant knowledge. So I’ve decided to document my top heroes (in order of how much they influenced me):
- Bruce Schneier. He is the person who got me into looking at the world in a different way. But the genius of Bruce is that he could not only articulate complex ideas in security, but actually contribute to usable methods and code … he practiced what he taught. I teach what I teach because of him, and he inspired me into seeing the potential of building a more trusted world with cryptography. He is also someone who can appear on broadcast media, and showcase fully the true intellect that this field has been built on. Over his career he created many novel encryption methods including Skien (a contender for the SHA-3 standard) [here], Twofish (a contender for the AES) [here] and Blowfish [here].
2. Adi Shamir. A person who’s work builds the foundation of our industry. He tested, he created, he probed, and he has always been there. He’s the “S” in RSA, and he built the foundations around Zero Knowledge Proof [here]. He innovated within…
