From: gnu@cygnus.com
Date: Fri, 15 Jan 93 09:36:17 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Whitfield Diffie gets award
Message-ID: <9301151735.AA17487@cygnus.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


		SUN ENGINEER RECEIVES INTERNATIONAL AWARD;
		 FOUNDED NEW FIELD OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- January 13, 1993 -- Whitfield Diffie, 48, 
Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems Computer Corporation (SMCC),
was recently awarded the degree of Doctor of Technical Sciences,
Honoris Causa, by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.  The award
was given for founding a new field of scientific research, public key
cryptography, which grew out of discoveries Diffie made at Stanford
University in 1975.

The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, or ETH after the initials of
its German name, is one of the most prestigious technical universities
in the world.  It counts among its alumni some of the foremost
scientists of the 20th century, including Albert Einstein and John
VonNeuman.  Doctorates "by reason of honor" make up less than one tenth
of the total number of doctoral degrees awarded by the ETH.  They are
granted for major scientific or engineering achievements and are given
only after a nomination and review process taking two to three years.

In conventional cryptography, encrypting and decrypting messages were
inseparable; anyone who could create an encrypted message could also
read it and vice versa.  By separating these functions, public key
cryptography allows people to guarantee the privacy of conversations
with people they have never met before and to apply unforgeable
"digital signatures" to their messages.  In Diffie's words: it does
what signatures and envelopes do for ordinary mail.

At the time Diffie began his work in cryptography, he was one of only a
handful of people not employed by government intelligence agencies who
took a serious interest in the field.  Today, the International
Association for Cryptologic Research, of which he is one of the
founding directors, has hundreds of members from industry and academia
worldwide.

Diffie joined Sun in the summer of 1991 with the title of Distinguished
Engineer, although one of his inventions had already been used in the
company's security products since 1987.  In hiring Diffie, Sun
recognized both the rising importance of security in computer
communications and the critical role of cryptography in achieving that
security.  In the latest Sun(TM) Solaris(R) operating system, the 
original "secure RPC" has been improved, while more comprehensive 
applications of cryptography are planned for future versions of 
Solaris.

Sun Microsystems Computer Corporation (SMCC) is the world's leading
supplier of open client-server computing solutions. With headquarters
in Mountain View, Calif., SMCC is an operating company of Sun
Microsystems, Inc. 

				###

Sun Microsystems, Sun Microsystems Computer Corp., Sun, the Sun logo,
are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Solaris is a registered trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc.