Shafrira Goldwasser

Shafrira Goldwasser

Shafrira "Shafi" Goldwasser ( Hebrew שפרירה גולדווסר; *  1958 in New York City ) is an American computer scientist.

In 1979 she received a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Carnegie Mellon University , a master's degree in 1981 and a doctorate in computer science from UC Berkeley in 1983 . In 1983 she came to MIT and in 1997 became the first holder of the new RSA professorship for electrical engineering and computer science. She is a member of the Theory of Computation Group at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory . She is also Professor of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at the Weizmann Institute for Science in Israel .

Goldwasser does research on complexity theory , cryptography and algorithmic number theory . In 1986, together with Joe Kilian, she developed the proof of prime numbers based on elliptic curves , named after both authors . She is (around 1982) the co-inventor of zero-knowledge proofs (as well as interactive proof systems in the same work with Charles Rackoff and Silvio Micali ), which show the validity of an assertion interactively and probabilistically without the transmission of additional knowledge and are a key tool in the design of cryptographic protocols . Her further contributions in the field of cryptography include the co-development of the Blum Goldwasser cryptosystem and the GMR signature procedure. Her work in complexity theory deals with the classification of approximate problems , where she showed that some NP-hard problems remain difficult even if only an approximate solution is sought.

Goldwasser was awarded the Gödel Prize in Theoretical Computer Science twice for her groundbreaking results : first in 1993 (for “The knowledge complexity of interactive proof systems” ), and again in 2001 (for “Interactive Proofs and the Hardness of Approximating Cliques” ), her participation on the PCP theorem . Other awards include ACM's Grace Murray Hopper Award for Outstanding Young Computer Expert of 1996, the RSA Award in Mathematics (1998) for outstanding mathematical contributions to cryptography and the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award (2017). In 2002 she gave a plenary lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Beijing ( Mathematical foundations of modern cryptography: computational complexity perspective ) and in 1990 she was invited speaker at the ICM in Kyoto ( Interactive proofs and applications ).

She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001, the National Academy of Sciences in 2004, and the National Academy of Engineering in 2005 . For 2012 she was awarded the Turing Award .

Web links

• Shafi Goldwasser's homepage at MIT (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Shafi Goldwasser, Joe Kilian: Almost all primes can be quickly certified. Proc. 18th STOC Berkeley 1986, pp. 316-329; Primality testing using elliptic curves. Journal ACM 46 (1999), No. 4, pp. 450-472
2. ↑ Goldwasser-Kilian primality test ( memento of the original from July 21, 2007 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. (PDF; 132 kB) 
3. ↑ Shafi Goldwasser, Silvio Micali, Charles Rackoff The knowledge complexity of interactive proof systems , SIAM Journal on Computing, Volume 18, 1989, pp. 186-208 and STOC (ACM Symposium on the theory of computing) 1985 (preprints of the work should already In 1982)
4. ^ Book of Members. Retrieved July 26, 2016 .