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Leonard Adleman | |
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| Born | Leonard Max Adleman (1945-12-31)December 31, 1945 (age 80) San Francisco, California, US |
| Education | University of California, Berkeley (BA,MA,PhD) |
| Known for | RSA |
| Awards | Turing Award (2002) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Computer science Cryptography |
| Institutions | University of Southern California |
| Thesis | Number-Theoretic Aspects of Computational Complexity (1976) |
| Doctoral advisor | Manuel Blum |
Leonard Adleman (born December 31, 1945) is an American computer scientist. He is one of the creators of theRSA encryption algorithm, for which he received the 2002Turing Award.[1] He is also known for the creation of the field ofDNA computing and coining the termcomputer virus.[2]
Leonard M. Adleman was born to aJewish[3] family inCalifornia. His family had originally immigrated to the United States from modern-dayBelarus, from theMinsk area.[3] He grew up inSan Francisco and attended theUniversity of California, Berkeley, where he received hisB.A. degree in mathematics in 1968 and hisPh.D. degree inEECS in 1976.[1][4] He was also the mathematical consultant on the movieSneakers.[5] In 1996, he became a member of theNational Academy of Engineering[6] for contributions to the theory of computation and cryptography. He is also a member of theNational Academy of Sciences.[7]
Adleman is also an amateur boxer and has sparred withJames Toney.[8]
In 1994, his paperMolecular Computation of Solutions To Combinatorial Problems described the experimental use ofDNA as a computational system.[9] In it, he solved a seven-node instance of theHamiltonian Graph problem, anNP-complete problem similar to thetravelling salesman problem. While the solution to a seven-node instance istrivial, this paper is the first known instance of the successful use of DNA to compute analgorithm. DNA computing has been shown to have potential as a means to solve several other large-scale combinatorial search problems.[10] Adleman is widely referred to as the Father of DNA Computing.[11]
In 2002, he and his research group managed to solve a 'nontrivial' problem using DNA computation.[12] Specifically, they solved a 20-variableSAT problem having more than 1 million potential solutions. They did it like the one Adleman used in his seminal 1994 paper. First, a mixture of DNA strands logically representative of the problem's solution space was synthesized. This mixture was then operated algorithmically using biochemical techniques to winnow out the 'incorrect' strands, leaving behind only those strands that 'satisfied' the problem. Analysis of the nucleotide sequence of these remaining strands revealed 'correct' solutions to the original problem.[1]
He is one of the original discoverers of theAdleman–Pomerance–Rumely primality test.[13][14]
Fred Cohen, in his 1984 paper,Experiments with Computer Viruses credited Adleman with coining the term "computer virus".[15]
As of 2017, Adleman is working on the mathematical theory of Strata. He is a Computer Science professor at the University of Southern California.[16]
For his contribution to the invention of theRSA cryptosystem, Adleman, along withRon Rivest andAdi Shamir, has been a recipient of the 1996Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award and the 2002Turing Award, often called theNobel Prize of Computer Science.[1] Adleman was elected a Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2006[17] and a 2021ACM Fellow.[18]
