Professor
Shamir
is
best
known
for
his
invention,
with
Ron
Rivest
and
Len
Adleman,
of
the
Rivest-Shamir-Adleman
(RSA)
public-key
encryption
and
digital
signature
schemes
in
1977.
RSA
is
the
critical
technology
that
provides
the
security
features
of
many
standardized
communication
systems,
including
the
Secure
Sockets
Layer
protocol
used
to
secure
web-based
electronic
commerce
and
the
Secure/Multipurpose
Internet
Mail
Extensions
standard
for
secure
email.
For
the
past
twenty
years,
RSA
has
been
taught
in
the
first-year
algebra
course
in
the
University
of
Waterloo's
Faculty
of
Mathematics.
