How I became friends with Martin Hellman

My wife and I were headed to GSB Prom on a Friday evening (one of those silly social contracts you sign when you attend business school). Before prom, we planned to stop at a political fundraiser. The event was held at someone's home, where everyone donated to the candidate's campaign. The host invited the GSB Veterans club at no charge. I usually avoid these events, but the host was my future employer, so I intended to make a brief appearance.

We arrived as the candidate spoke to the group. Most guests wore name tags listing their names and affiliations. Among the crowd were people from Stanford, local government officials, defense tech executives, some friends from the vets club, and an older man whose name tag simply read "Marty."

The air left my lungs. Could it be? I had pictured this man in his forties, but this person was much older. The resemblance was unmistakable. Behind a tree, I discreetly googled "Martin Hellman."

Holy shit. It's him.

My chest tightened. I whisper-yelled to my wife, "That's Martin Hellman!" She didn’t know who he was. I couldn't stay still. My body shook.

If you ask my friends, they'd say I'm quite unbothered by "important people." Celebrities and politicians don't interest me. For example, I listen to a lot of Taylor Swift, but if I saw her in public, I wouldn't approach her. So why did I feel like a ten-year-old girl meeting her boy-band idol?

You know that question: who would you like to have dinner with, dead or alive? Martin Hellman is that person for me.

Martin Hellman is a renowned cryptologist and mathematician. He co-invented public-key (asymmetric) cryptography alongside Whitfield Diffie and Ralph Merkle. Their 1976 paper forms the foundation for nearly every modern internet security protocol. The Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange was the first public-key protocol, allowing two parties to securely establish a shared secret over an insecure channel.

Public-key cryptography makes secure web browsing (HTTPS), online banking, encrypted email, and digital signatures possible. RSA - introduced in 1977 - became the first widely-used public-key encryption and digital signature scheme, following the 1976 paper. Today, RSA powers secure data transmission, digital signatures, and SSL/TLS encryption across the web.

Martin Hellman and Whitfield Diffie won the Turing Award for their work. Without them, internet privacy wouldn't exist.

Martin Hellman is my hero. I first learned about him as an undergrad doing research for a professor who worked on integrating elliptic curve cryptography - particularly Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) - into the Navy's infrastructure. This was also around the time I discovered information theory, which I later learned was the focus of Martin Hellman's PhD.

Two fascinating fields I love - cryptography and information theory - the frontiers of both connected to the man I had met that Friday.

I introduced myself, and we talked for about an hour. We exchanged contact information, and I emailed him the next day. I took a chance and asked if he and his wife would like to come over to our house for dinner. I didn’t expect a reply; I was grateful just to have met him and helped him to his car after our spontaneous conversation. To my surprise, he accepted.

That dinner will stay with me forever. I’ve seen him a few times on campus since. We talk about everything - information theory, cryptography, the military, Stanford, politics, violence, religion, the threat of annihilation, masculinity, and Leo Tolstoy. Not only is he still sharp and brilliant - he's seventy-nine, so he has stories about nearly everything.

I'm not exactly sure why he entertains my company. Perhaps it's because fewer people today appreciate what it means to introduce public-key cryptography to the world - work that was once celebrated as groundbreaking as electricity or the telephone, but has now largely faded from public memory.

It’s sad to leave Stanford after only recently meeting my hero. But I suspect this is the start of a meaningful friendship. The 50th anniversary of his 1976 paper is coming up. If you've made it this far through my rambling fan letter, consider discussing public-key cryptography with your friends - in honor of Marty.