MATH Seminar
| Title: Chocolate key cryptography: a delicious way to send secret messages |
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| Demonstration: for undergraduates |
| Speaker: Ezra Brown of Virginia Tech |
| Contact: Skip Garibaldi, skip@mathcs.emory.edu |
| Date: 2009-10-08 at 7:00PM |
| Venue: MSC W201 |
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| Abstract: The art and science of secure communication is called cryptography. To send someone a secret message, you need two things: (1) a message scrambler ("the cryptosystem"), and (2) a piece of information that tells the sender and the receiver just how the scrambling is done ("the key"). Keeping the key in the right hands and out of the wrong hands is a major problem for cryptographers, and public key cryptography is a solution to this problem that is at work on every computer and in every network in the world. This talk is about Chocolate Key Cryptography, which is a way to describe a certain public key cryptosystem that is easy to learn, fun, interactive, and delicious. Biographical Sketch: Ezra (Bud) Brown grew up in New Orleans, has degrees from Rice and LSU, and has been at Virginia Tech since 1969, where he is currently Alumni Distinguished Professor of Mathematics. Although most of his research has been in number theory and combinatorics, he once wrote a paper with a sociologist. During the summers, he works on problems of cryptography with an unnamed government agency. He has been honored with some teaching and writing awards. He enjoys singing in operas, playing jazz piano, and gardening, and he occasionally bakes biscuits for his students. |
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