Encryption wins this year’s Turing Award

When it comes to computing, the Turing Award is the equivalent of a Nobel Prize. This year, Martin E Hellman and Whitfield Diffie, the creators of public-key cryptography, have been given the prestigious honor. The award, which is named after the British mathematician Alan Turing, is worth $1 million in cash and is sponsored by Google. It is only awarded to engineers or scientists who have aided in the advancement of computing. Hellman and Diffie are the founding fathers of public-key cryptography, which is the basis of all secure messaging, even today. In 1976, the pair created the Diffie-Hellman key…

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