Adi Shamir

Professor Adi Shamir is the Paul and Marlene Borman Professorial Chair of Applied Mathematics at Weizmann Institute of Science. He has propelled the field of cryptography to new heights, the most iconic being his work with Ron Rivest and Leonard Adleman in creating the RSA public-key cryptography algorithm for securing online communication and information exchange. He is also a co-inventor of the Feige–Fiat–Shamir identification scheme that uses zero-knowledge proof for identity authentication.

In recognition of his contributions to cryptography, Prof Shamir is a recipient of the 1996 Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award, the 2002 Turing Award, the 2008 Israel Prize for computer sciences and the 2017 Japan Prize. He is a member of several scientific academies, including the US National Academy of Science, the Royal Society (London), the French Academy of Science and the Israeli Academy of Science.