[wildmanx]

>> Who invented commitment schemes?

> ~My wife~ Not sure.

Seriously? You work professionally in the crypto space and don't know where this is from? Or don't feel it's important to attribute such fundamental ideas to the appropriate people? If you really don't know, a quick google would have educated you. But what I fear to be more likely is that you apparently just don't give a damn.

For anybody remotely interested, look up Manuel Blum's work, e.g. "Coin flipping by telephone" presented at CRYPTO 1981. ACM Turing Award.

Or Rivest, Shamir, Adleman, "Mental Poker". Oh, those guys also got the ACM Turing Award.

[jlrubin]

I think you're unfairly punishing him for not knowing; it's a bit tough to find. I'll give you that the joke -- pinning it on his wife -- is unfunny.

None of the folks you mentioned, I believe, invented commitment schemes. Whit Diffie has a good history here: https://ee.stanford.edu/~hellman/publications/24.pdf. So these innovations would have been ~1 academic generation prior.

Of course, the GCHQ probably invented them even earlier ;)

[wildmanx]

Hm, I'd consider Whit and Martin to be the same generation as Blum and the RSA gang. :) I'd say Goldreich, Goldwasser, Micali and friends are the "next generation", if you really want to distinguish generations, no?

I didn't actually find the joke too unfunny, but not acknowledging the giants on whose shoulders his little business stands is a pretty inexcusable faux-pas.

[jlrubin]

Yeah, I think it's basically splitting hairs.

My understanding of the chronology is that Whit was a bit earlier than Ron to the party, and Whit's seminal work is what inspired Ron and gang to work out RSA.

Hence I put Whit 1 'academic generation' prior because Ron's work was directly inspired by Whit's work. This is slightly different than what I'd label pure contemporary work (I don't think Ron was doing much cryptographic work before Whit's seminal papers).

Could be wrong, and again, splitting hairs.