Martin Hellman is best known as the inventor – with Whitfield Diffie and Ralph Merkle – of public key cryptography in 1976. Today, public key cryptography secures trillions of dollars of financial transactions daily, making it possible for us to bank, shop, book airline tickets – and perform countless other tasks on the Internet with peace of mind.

Dr.  Hellman has a deep interest in the ethics of technological development. He is a long-time activist in the computer privacy debate, and for more than 30 years he has campaigned to raise awareness about the urgent need to defuse the threat of nuclear weapons. Most recently, he began applying the engineering discipline known as risk analysis – the same method used to reduce the dangers associated with nuclear power plants and other complex systems – to demonstrate the continued risk of a nuclear catastrophe even at a time when most people think this danger is behind us. This approach and his campaign have won support from Nobel Laureates, military leaders, academics and government leaders.

Dr. Hellman earned both a master’s degree and doctorate in electrical engineering at Stanford. He was an assistant professor at MIT before joining the faculty here in 1971, serving as Associate Chair of the EE Department, Chairman of EE Graduate Admissions, and as Associate Dean of Graduate Studies for minority student affairs until he became Professor Emeritus in 1996.

His work in cryptography has been recognized by many awards, including the IEEE Hamming Medal, the ACM Kanellakis Award and the National Computer Systems Security Award. He is a Marconi International Fellow, an IEEE Fellow, a Fellow of the International Association for Cryptologic Research and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. In 2011, Hellman and his collaborators on encryption were inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

He has authored over 75 technical papers holds 10 U.S. patents, along with a number of corresponding foreign patents. He was named a Stanford Engineering Hero in 2012.

• Read more about Dr. Hellman and his work or watch a short video about his invention of public key cryptography.
• Find more information about his work in cryptography and his efforts to defuse the nuclear threat here.

Dr. Hellman spoke about "The Wisdom of Foolishness" after being inducted as a Hero on January 29, 2013.