Marvin Wunderlich

Marvin Charles Wunderlich (born May 8, 1937 , † September 27, 2013 ) was an American mathematician who dealt with algorithmic number theory and especially factoring methods.

Wunderlich received his doctorate in 1964 under William Edgar Briggs at the University of Colorado in Boulder ( Sieve generated sequences of natural numbers ). He later went to Northern Illinois University and worked for the National Security Agency (NSA).

In 1967 he published a review article on sieving methods with application in factorization and beyond. In the 1970s he dealt with the continued fraction method of factorization, the efficiency of which he investigated through extensive computer experiments. At that time, factorization was still considered an “exotic occupation” for mathematicians, which changed with the invention of the RSA encryption method in the late 1970s. In the 1980s he was one of the first to implement factoring algorithms on massively parallel computers (continued fraction method). On NASA's “Massively Parallel Processor” (MPP), he and KJ McCurdy factorized a 64-digit number (decimal places) in 1986. These efforts to factorize large numbers with parallel computers began in the early 1980s with several groups at the same time, for example at Sandia National Laboratories , where Gustavus Simmons and colleagues factored a 67-digit number on a Cray-XMP and in 1984 a 71-digit number , whereby the square sieve by Carl Pomerance has been used in some cases (James Davis, Diane Holdridge 1983, Sandia Labs). The records made headlines back then, because in 1981 50-digit numbers (with difficult factoring properties) were still considered factoring-safe, which had an impact on the key lengths used in the RSA encryption systems.

With Derrick Henry Lehmer and Richard Guy he dealt with aliquot sequences of numbers (in which each number is the sum of the real divisors of the previous number).

References

1. ↑ 1985 he switched completely to the NSA, ( uncommon factoring on thefreelibrary.com )
2. ↑ Wunderlich: Sieving procedures on a digital computer , Journal ACM, Vol. 14, 1967, pp. 101-119
3. ↑ Wunderlich: A running time analysis of Brillhart's continued fraction factoring method , Lecture Notes in Mathematics, Vol. 751, 1979, pp. 328–342.
   See Donald Knuth , The Art of Computer Programming , Vol. 2, 1981, pp. 383/384
4. ^ Factoring numbers on the massively parallel computer , Advances in Cryptology, Proceedings of Crypto 83, D. Chaum (editor), Plenum Press 1984, p. 87;
   Recent advances in the design and implementation of large integer factoring algorithms , IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, 1983, p. 67;
   Implementing the continued fraction factoring algorithm on parallel machines , Mathematics of Computation, Vol. 44, 1985, pp. 251-260
5. ^ Bach, Shallit: Algorithmic Number Theory , p. 10
6. ↑ Spiegel, No. 52, 1983, Breakthrough in Beer
7. ↑ Computerwoche, August 2, 1985 ( Memento of the original from November 23, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
8. ^ Davis, Holdridge: Factorization using the quadratic sieve factoring algorithm , Crypto 83 and Sandia Report 83-1346;
   Davis, Holdridge, Simmons: Status Report on Factoring at Sandia Labs , Eurocrypt 84, p. 183
9. ↑ that is, the previous number itself is not counted