Abstract
In this paper, I look back at my career as a mathematician and mathematical cryptographer, mainly concentrating on my student days and the early parts of my career. I also discuss my research philosophy and what I mean by the term “combinatorial cryptography.” Along the way, I recall some influential people, books and papers.
D. R. Stinson’s research is supported by NSERC Discovery grant RGPIN-03882.
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Notes
- 1.
I did have to memorize the multiplication table, but this did not bother me.
- 2.
This quote is from the Wikipedia article “Conway’s Soldiers” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway’s_Soldiers), which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.
- 3.
This quote is from the Wikipedia article “Murray S. Klamkin” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_S._Klamkin), which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.
- 4.
This is sometimes called a Minkowski diagram.
- 5.
Gus was another important influence on my career.
- 6.
Unconditional security is basically the same thing as being secure against an infinitely powerful adversary.
- 7.
I attribute this amusing term to Curt Lindner.
- 8.
This quote is from the Wikipedia article “Computers and Intractability” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computers_and_Intractability), which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.
- 9.
There is apparently no source to substantiate the claim that Einstein actually said this, but it is still a good quote.
- 10.
I should emphasize that I am not specifically criticizing the wording and notation in this definition. I am just using it to illustrate how complicated cryptographic definitions have become in recent years.
References
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Blake, I.F., Fuji-Hara, R., Mullin, R.C., Vanstone, S.A.: Computing logarithms in finite fields of characteristic two. SIAM J. Algebraic Discrete Methods 5, 276–285 (1984)
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Delsarte, P.: The association schemes of coding theory. Ph.D. thesis, Université Catholique de Louvain, June 1973
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Stinson, D.R. (2020). Looking Back—My Life as a Mathematician and Cryptographer. In: Paterson, K., Stebila, D. (eds) Selected Areas in Cryptography – SAC 2019. SAC 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11959. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38471-5_1
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