Hamilton Day Lecture 2022: Cryptography: Secrets and Lies, Knowledge and Trust

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What protects your computer password when you log on, or your credit card number when you shop on-line, from hackers listening on the communication lines? Can two people who never met create a secret language in the presence of others, which no one but them can understand? Is it possible for a group of people to play a (card-less) game of Poker on the telephone, without anyone being able to cheat? Can you convince others that you can solve a tough math puzzle, without giving them the slightest hint of your solution?

These questions (and their remarkable answers) are in the realm of modern cryptography. In this talk I plan to survey some of the mathematical and computational ideas, definitions and assumptions which underlie privacy and security of the Internet and electronic commerce. We shall see how these lead to solutions of the questions above and many others. I will also discuss the fragility of the current foundations of modern cryptography, and the need for stronger ones.

No special background knowledge will be assumed.

About Professor Wigderson

Professor Avi Wigderson is the Herbert H. Maass Professor of Mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton University. His research interests include complexity theory, parallel algorithms, graph theory, cryptography, distributed computing, and neural networks. He has received numerous prizes including the Knuth Prize 2019, Gödel Prize in 2009, Nevanlinna Prize in 1994 and in 2021, Wigderson shared the Abel Prize with László Lovász “for their foundational contributions to theoretical computer science and discrete mathematics, and their leading role in shaping them into central fields of modern mathematics”.

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