Ralph C. Merkle (born 2 February 1952) is a pioneer in public key cryptography, and more recently a researcher and speaker on nanotechnology and cryonics.
Merkle graduated from Livermore High School in 1970 and proceeded to study Computer Science at U.C. Berkeley, obtaining his B.A. in 1974, and his M.S. in 1977. In 1979 he was awarded a PhD in Electrical Engineering at Stanford; the thesis was entitled Secrecy, authentication and public key systems.
In industry, he was the manager of compiler development at Elxsi from 1980. In 1988, he became a research scientist at Xerox PARC, until 1999. Subsequently he worked as a nanotechnology theorist for Zyvex , returning to academia in 2003 as a distinguished professor at Georgia Tech.
Ralph Merkle is the great grandnephew of baseball star Fred Merkle (see History of baseball.)
Merkle devised an early scheme for communication over an insecure channel: Merkle's Puzzles. He also coinvented the Merkle-Hellman public key cryptosystem, and invented Merkle trees . While at Xerox PARC, Merkle designed the Khufu and Khafre block ciphers, and the Snefru hash function.
Whitfield Diffie has described Merkle as "possibly the single most inventive character in the public-key saga."
In addition to his work at Georgia Tech, Merkle is also a director of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation.
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See also: K. Eric Drexler, Robert Freitas