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Harvard Computer Scientist Michael O. Rabin Wins EMET Prize
Prestigious $100,000 award celebrates Rabin's far reaching influence and contributions to society
Cambridge, Mass. - December 13, 2004 - The A.M.N. Foundation for the Advancement of Science, Art and Culture in Israel has awarded Michael O. Rabin, the Thomas J. Watson, Sr. Professor of Computer Science at Harvard Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences (DEAS), the 2004 EMET Prize in the Exact Sciences: Computer Sciences.
The citation reads in part: "The EMET Prize is awarded to Prof. Michael Oser Rabin for his extraordinary achievements in a variety of fields: Automata theory, computational complexity, randomized algorithms and encryption theory. His work has defined the most significant trends of research in computer science since the field was founded. His influence and international status have greatly contributed to advancing Israel's standing as a leading world center of computer science and knowledge-intensive industries."
Rabin, who has taught jointly at Harvard and Hebrew University for many years, received his M.S. in Mathematics from Hebrew University and his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Princeton University. He is well-known for co-developing the Miller-Rabin randomized primality test, an algorithm which determines whether a given number is prime. Because the generation of large primes is essential to all modern cryptographic systems, the test is used millions-of-times each day to protect and secure transactions on the Internet.
In recent years Rabin has created, with Y. Aumann and Y. Z. Ding, Hyper-Encryption, the first ever encryption scheme provably providing everlasting secrecy against an adversary with unlimited computational power; developed, with S. Micali and J. Kilian, Zero Knowledge Sets, a new primitive for privacy and security protocols; and invented and implemented, with W. Yang and H. Rao (both of DEAS), a microchip for physical generation of a strong stream of truly random bits. Currently, Rabin and his students have practically implemented Hyper-Encryption by using a "virtual satellite" model, a common peer-to-peer network where each node stores and updates random pages that are downloaded on request by parties using a common key.
His contributions have been recognized with numerous other awards, including the Paris Kanellakis Prize in 2004 (with Gary Miller, Robert Solovay, and Volker Strassen) for "realizing the practical uses of cryptography and for demonstrating the power of algorithms to make random choices", and the A.M. Turing Award, considered the highest honor in Computer Science. Rabin is also a member of several academies, including the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the French Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
Israeli Prime Minster Ariel Sharon will present the prize to Rabin and to the winners in other disciplines on December 26th in Jerusalem. The A.M.N. Foundation, created in 1999 by a group of Latin American friends of Israel, has sponsored and awarded the EMET prizes (totaling one-million dollars each year) in five categories-Exact Sciences, Life Sciences, Social Sciences, Humanities and Judaism, and Art and Culture-since 2002.
About Harvard Engineering and Applied Sciences
The Harvard Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences is dedicated to the pursuit of interdisciplinary education and research in science and technology. To learn more visit www.deas.harvard.edu.
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