What do you do if you win one of the big prizes in math or computing and are invited to become a Heidelberg Laureate?
Some go back to their work, like Yoshua Bengio and mentor the next generation. Others become great men who wear their celebrity like a warm coat, like Vint Cerf, who is also in Heidelberg this week.
Then there is Martin Hellman. He won the Turing Award in 2015, along with Whitfield Diffie (who is also in Heidelberg), for public key cryptography, the Diffie-Hellman key exchange.
Public key cryptography became controversial as soon as it s was announced. The National Security Agency tried to suppress the technology under Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, who later saw the problem with weak solutions, said Hellman. Another cryptography war erupted in the 1990s with the “Clipper Chip,” an attempt to give crypto a “backdoor” for cops. Hellman called it a front door.
The third cryptography war began only recently, with the FBI putting pressure on Apple and others to get “exceptional access” to iPhones, and the Trump Administration now trying to ban strong encryption. “It’s in a lull,” Hellman said of the current conflict. “Hopefully it dies.” But attacks are global, with even Australia trying to limit it. “They want to defy gravity to put things in space more cheaply,” he said. Hellman has been arguing this case for decades.
In the process Hellman has created a second life, as an activist.
Martin Hellman has concerns. He likes freedom, and hates war. He rejects attempts to ban encryption because cops already have plenty of information on us, like security cameras and license plates that can be automatically read as you drive. “I recognize there are trade offs. The FBI is trying to protect safety. We just have to point out when they’re wrong.”
Martin Hellman’s books latest book goes far afield from math and computing. A New Map of Relationships , was written in 2016 with his wife Dorothie. They’ve been married for 52 years. He says she taught him how not to fight. His frame gave him a platform for spreading what she taught him.
Hellman was also part of the Beyond War movement in the 1980s, but age has also brought wisdom. He now recognizes there are other ways to make change.
“One of our group,” Dick Crane, “left to work on the technology of photovoltaic cells https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/4808006_RA_Crane, eventually being cited in hundreds of papers and co-founding SunPower, a major solar panel manufacturer.
“The world works in mysteriously good ways” he concluded. Change acts on one person at a time. It’s amazing the difference one person can make.”
There’s more to life than math.
