Martin Hellman is best know for his work in cryptography, particularly in the production of the Diffie Hellman cryptography key, the first public key-based encryption technique.

Martin Edward Hellman was born in 1945 in New York City, where he spent his early years. As an undergraduate he studied at New York University and he received a B.E. in electrical engineering in 1965. Moving to Stanford University Hellman obtained an M.S. in 1967 and a Ph.D. in 1969, both of these were in electrical engineering. Hellman worked at the IBM Watson Research Center from 1968 to 1969, during the final part of his graduate studies. In 1969 Hellman worked as an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 1971 Hellman took up an appointment on the faculty of Stanford University, initially as a lecturer and assistant professor in the electrical engineering department. In 1974 Hellman met Whitfield Diffie (who was on a...