Ronald (Ron) Linn Rivest

Rivest has published widely in several areas of computer science. A full bibliography with almost 300 entries for his publications and talks, many with links as to where they can be obtained, is here. The following are the items mentioned in the main essay.

1. Rivest, R. L., A. Shamir and L. Adleman, “A method for obtaining digital signatures and public-key cryptosystems,” Communications of the ACM, Volume 21, Num. 2, pp. 120-126, Feb. 1978. Available here. This is the famous paper that introduced a practical public-key encryption system. It resulted in the three authors receiving the 2002 Turing Award.
2. Rivest, Ronald L., Adi Shamir and Leonard M. Adleman, Cryptographic Communications system and method, U.S. Patent 4,405,829. Issued September 20, 1983. Available here. This important and influential patent has been referenced by almost 900 other patents granted between 1985 and 2011.
3. Cormen, Thomas H., Charles E. Leiserson and Ronald L. Rivest, Introduction to Algorithms, MIT Press and McGraw-Hill, first edition 1990. A second edition, including Clifford Stein as the fourth author, was published in 2001 and a third in 2009. This textbook on algorithms is commonly known as the “Big White Book” or “CLR” after the authors (“CLRS” after the second edition). It is one of the most often-cited references in papers on computer algorithms. It won the award for Best Professional and Scholarly Book in Computer Science and Data Processing by the Association of American Publishers in 1990. It has been translated into at least 12 other languages.
4. Diffie, Whitfield and Martin E. Hellman, “New Directions in Cryptography,” IEEE Transactions On Information Theory, Vol. IT-22, Num. 6, November 1976, pp. 644-654. While not written by Rivest or his co-recipients, this is the paper that inspired them to seek out realistic methods to implement a public key cryptographic system.
5. Rivest, Ronald L., “The ThreeBallot Voting System,” available here.