Biography:Neal Koblitz

Short description: American mathematician and cryptographer

Neal Koblitz
Born	(1948-12-24) December 24, 1948
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Princeton University Harvard University
Known for	Elliptic and hyperelliptic curve cryptography
Scientific career
Fields	Mathematics
Institutions	University of Washington University of Waterloo
Doctoral advisor	Nick Katz
Doctoral students	Daqing Wan

Neal I. Koblitz (born December 24, 1948) is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Washington. He is also an adjunct professor with the Centre for Applied Cryptographic Research at the University of Waterloo. He is the creator of hyperelliptic curve cryptography and the independent co-creator of elliptic curve cryptography.

Biography

Koblitz received his B.A. in mathematics from Harvard University in 1969. While at Harvard, he was a Putnam Fellow in 1968. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1974 under the direction of Nick Katz. From 1975 to 1979 he was an instructor at Harvard University. In 1979 he began working at the University of Washington.

Koblitz's 1981 article "Mathematics as Propaganda" criticized the misuse of mathematics in the social sciences and helped motivate Serge Lang's successful challenge to the nomination of political scientist Samuel P. Huntington to the National Academy of Sciences. In The Mathematical Intelligencer, Koblitz, Steven Weintraub, and Saunders Mac Lane later criticized the arguments of Herbert A. Simon, who had attempted to defend Huntington's work.

He co-invented elliptic-curve cryptography in 1985 with Victor S. Miller, and for this was awarded the Levchin Prize in 2021.

With his wife Ann Hibner Koblitz, he in 1985 founded the Kovalevskaia Prize to honor women scientists in developing countries. It was financed from the royalties of Ann Hibner Koblitz's 1983 biography of Sofia Kovalevskaia. Although the awardees have ranged over many fields of science, one of the 2011 winners was a Vietnamese mathematician, Lê Thị Thanh Nhàn. Koblitz is an atheist.

See also

• List of University of Waterloo people
• Gross–Koblitz formula

Selected publications

•   (1984) [1977]. p-adic Numbers, p-adic Analysis, and Zeta-Functions. Graduate Texts in Mathematics. 58 (Second ed.). New York: Springer-Verlag. doi:10.1007/978-1-4612-1112-9. ISBN 978-1-4612-1112-9. 
•   (1980). p-adic Analysis: a Short Course on Recent Work. London Mathematical Society Lecture Note Series. 46. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521280600. https://www.cambridge.org/sg/academic/subjects/mathematics/number-theory/p-adic-analysis-short-course-recent-work. Retrieved 10 August 2022. 
•   (1993) [1984]. Introduction to Elliptic Curves and Modular Forms. Graduate Texts in Mathematics. 97 (Second ed.). New York: Springer-Verlag. doi:10.1007/978-1-4612-0909-6. ISBN 978-1-4612-0909-6. 
•   (1994) [1987]. A Course in Number Theory and Cryptography. Graduate Texts in Mathematics. 114 (Second ed.). New York: Springer-Verlag. doi:10.1007/978-1-4419-8592-7. ISBN 978-1-4419-8592-7. 
•   (1998). Algebraic Aspects of Cryptography. Algorithms and Computation in Mathematics. 3. New York: Springer-Verlag. doi:10.1007/978-3-662-03642-6. ISBN 978-3-662-03642-6. 
•   (2008). Random Curves: Journeys of a Mathematician. Springer-Verlag. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-74078-0. ISBN 978-3540740773. 

External links

• Neal Koblitz's home page
• Neal Koblitz at the Mathematics Genealogy Project