Martin Hellman becomes a Stanford Engineering Hero

Best known as co-inventor of public key cryptography, Martin Hellman also earned distinction as a proponent of nuclear disarmament and as an advocate for improved race relations at Stanford. As an Engineering Hero, he joins a select group of eminent alumni and faculty of the Stanford School of Engineering.

When F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote “there are no second acts in American lives,” it is doubtful he ever imagined meeting Martin Hellman, professor emeritus of electrical engineering at Stanford and the most recent inductee into the select group of eminent faculty and alumni known as Stanford Engineering Heroes.

Hellman first gained fame in the 1970s as a co-inventor of public key cryptography, the digital security system that safeguards literally trillions of dollars every day in global financial transactions. Public key cryptography is so fundamental to our digital lives that it is nearly impossible to conceive of life today without it. It is there every time someone buys something online, but because it works invisibly in the background, most people are probably not even aware it is protecting them.

Newly inducted Stanford Engineering Hero, Martin Hellman (right), and Jim Plummer, dean of the School of Engineering (left), photographed in a packed house at NVIDIA Auditorium before Hellman's hero lecture. (Photo: Stanford University School of Engineering)

“The Stanford Engineering Heroes program recognizes the achievements of Stanford engineers who have profoundly advanced the course of human, social and economic progress through engineering,” said Jim Plummer, Dean of the Stanford School of Engineering. “Marty Hellman is just the latest example of that legacy.”

The story of cryptography and the various chess moves Hellman traded with the National Security Agency to bring the invention to the world stage has been widely documented. Although that invention has deservedly been recognized as one of the most important technical advances of the late 20th Century, Hellman has gone on to second and third acts as a vocal advocate for reducing the risks posed by nuclear weapons and as a facilitator of improved race relations, particularly on the Stanford campus.

Act I: Stanford Engineering Hero Martin Hellman discusses the invention of digital cryptography. (Video: Courtesy of Stanford School of Engineering

Act II: Nuclear Disarmament

“In the 1970s, I was a typical electrical engineering professor. I was focused on my research,” said Hellman in an interview prior to his packed-house lecture on the night of his Engineering Hero induction. “After cryptography, in the early 1980’s, my interests shifted towards the bigger issues of the world. The way I saw it was, ‘what’s the point in proving theorems—albeit important theorems—if there’s not likely to be anybody around in 50-100 years to appreciate them?’”

Hellman looked around at the threats facing the world and focused on the biggest one he could find: nuclear war.

“The threat posed by nuclear weapons is symptomatic of a larger problem which underlies all of the major threats I’ve looked at, including global warming. That underlying problem is the chasm between our god-like physical power—the ability to create new life forms and the ability to destroy civilization, things only God is supposed to be able to do—and our emotional maturity level, which as a species is, at best, adolescent,” said Hellman.

During 1984-86 Hellman took an unpaid leave of absence from his faculty post to become a full-time volunteer, working with an American NGO known as Beyond War to create a dialog between the Western and the Soviet scientific communities, using science and technology as a common ground for discovering the equations of survival in the Nuclear Age. That project resulted in a book, Breakthrough: Emerging New Thinking, published simultaneously in Russian and English late in 1987, during the period of extremely rapid change in Soviet-American relations.

“We were really blessed that Gorbachev came to power as we were working on this project. Censorship was lifted so we could do the things we had always dreamed of doing but thought we couldn’t. We even got an endorsement from Gorbachev,” said Hellman.

Act III: Campus race relations

When Hellman resumed teaching in 1986, he headed in a new direction after experiencing the strong ethnic tension on campus. Many African American and Latino students felt they did not fit in. He advocated a “no fault” resolution process in which prejudice is seen as affecting everyone regardless of race. In that approach, Hellman notes, solutions are not directed at changing others, but in changing one's self.

In racial disharmony, Hellman saw a different facet of the same issue he confronted with the Soviets.

“With the Soviets the fundamental problem in a lot of ways wasn’t nuclear weapons. It was that we focused on their misdeeds, like how they were subjugating Eastern Europe. And they focused on our misdeeds, how we were subjugating Central America,” Hellman said. “Neither of us was focused on what we truly had the power to change, which was our own misdeeds.”

Current Activities

These days, Hellman continues to doggedly chase down the nuclear threat. He is perplexed when people ask why he is so concerned about an issue that society no longer sees it as a significant risk – a last-generation threat.

“I remind people that there are still 20,000 nuclear weapons in the world,” said Hellman. “The most serious national security concern facing both the United States and Russia is terrorists getting their hands on a nuclear weapon. And I think it’s prophetic that two out of seven of this year’s class of Engineering Heroes have made this issue their primary concern – former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry being the other.”

Hellman’s current effort applies risk analysis to a potential failure of nuclear deterrence. This engineering discipline can reduce catastrophic risks by paying attention to partial failures, rather than seeing their “successful” mitigation as proof that the system is safe.

Like so many other challenges he has faced in life, Martin Hellman approaches reducing nuclear risk the only way he knows how, as an engineer. 

Andrew Myers is associate director of communications for the Stanford University School of Engineering.

Last modified Tue, 26 Feb, 2013 at 11:59