David Chaum
| David Chaum | |
|---|---|
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| Born | 1955 (age 61–62) |
| Residence | Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles, California, United States |
| Occupation | inventor, cryptographer |
| Known for | DigiCash, ecash, IACR, mixes, voting systems |
| Website | http://www.chaum.com/ |
David Lee Chaum (born 1955) is the inventor of many cryptographic protocols, as well as ecash and DigiCash. His 1981 paper, "Untraceable Electronic Mail, Return Addresses, and Digital Pseudonyms", laid the groundwork for the field of anonymous communications research.
Chaum gained a doctorate in computer science and business administration from the University of California, Berkeley in 1982. Also that year, he founded the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR), which currently organizes academic conferences in cryptography research. Subsequently, he taught at the New York University Graduate School of Business Administration and at the University of California. He also formed a cryptography research group at the National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science (CWI) in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He founded DigiCash, an electronic cash company, in 1990.
Chaum received the Information Technology European Award for 1995. In 2004, he was named an IACR Fellow. In 2010, he received the RSA Conference award for excellence in the field of mathematics.
Chaum is credited as the inventor of secure digital cash for his 1982 paper, which also introduced the cryptographic primitive of a blind signature. These ideas have been described as the technical roots of the vision of the Cypherpunk movement that began in the late 1980s. Chaum's proposal allowed users to obtain digital currency from a bank and spend it in a manner that is untraceable by the bank or any other party. In 1988, he extended this idea (with Amos Fiat and Moni Naor) to allow offline transactions that enable detection of double-spending.
In 1990, he founded DigiCash, an electronic cash company, in Amsterdam to commercialize the ideas in his research. The first electronic payment was sent in 1994. In 1999, Chaum left the company.
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