Oded Goldreich – författare

Cryptography is concerned with the construction of schemes that withstand any abuse.

A cryptographic scheme is constructed so as to maintain a desired functionality, even under malicious attempts aimed at making it deviate from its prescribed behavior. The design of cryptographic systems must be based on firm foundations, whereas ad hoc approaches and heuristics are a very dangerous way to go. These foundations were developed mostly in the 1980s, in works that are all co-authored by Shafi Goldwasser and/or Silvio Micali. These works have transformed cryptography from an engineering discipline, lacking sound theoretical foundations, into a scientific field possessing a well-founded theory, which influences practice as well as contributes to other areas of theoretical computer science.

This book celebrates these works, which were the basis for bestowing the 2012 A.M. Turing Award upon Shafi Goldwasser and Silvio Micali. A significant portion of this book reproduces some of these works, and another portion consists of scientific perspectives by some of their former students. The highlight of the book is provided by a few chapters that allow the readers to meet Shafi and Silvio in person. These include interviews with them, their biographies and their Turing Award lectures.

Cryptography is concerned with the construction of schemes that withstand any abuse.

A cryptographic scheme is constructed so as to maintain a desired functionality, even under malicious attempts aimed at making it deviate from its prescribed behavior. The design of cryptographic systems must be based on firm foundations, whereas ad hoc approaches and heuristics are a very dangerous way to go. These foundations were developed mostly in the 1980s, in works that are all co-authored by Shafi Goldwasser and/or Silvio Micali. These works have transformed cryptography from an engineering discipline, lacking sound theoretical foundations, into a scientific field possessing a well-founded theory, which influences practice as well as contributes to other areas of theoretical computer science.

This book celebrates these works, which were the basis for bestowing the 2012 A.M. Turing Award upon Shafi Goldwasser and Silvio Micali. A significant portion of this book reproduces some of these works, and another portion consists of scientific perspectives by some of their former students. The highlight of the book is provided by a few chapters that allow the readers to meet Shafi and Silvio in person. These include interviews with them, their biographies and their Turing Award lectures.

This volume contains a collection of studies in the areas of complexity theory and property testing. The 21 pieces of scientific work included were conducted at different times, mostly during the last decade. Although most of these works have been cited in the literature, none of them was formally published before.

Within complexity theory the topics include constant-depth Boolean circuits, explicit construction of expander graphs, interactive proof systems, monotone formulae for majority, probabilistically checkable proofs (PCPs), pseudorandomness, worst-case to average-case reductions, and zero-knowledge proofs.

Within property testing the topics include distribution testing, linearity testing, lower bounds on the query complexity (of property testing), testing graph properties, and tolerant testing. A common theme in this collection is the interplay between randomness and computation.

This volume contains a collection of studies in the areas of complexity theory and local algorithms. A common theme in most of the papers is the interplay between randomness and computation. This interplay is pivotal to some parts of complexity theory and is essential for local algorithms.

The works included address a variety of topics in the areas of complexity theory and local algorithms. Within complexity theory the topics include approximation algorithms, counting problems, enumeration problems, explicit construction of expander graphs, fine grained complexity, interactive proof systems, PPT-search and pseudodeterminism, space complexity, and worst-case to average-case reductions. Within local algorithms the focus is mostly on property testing and on locally testable and decodable codes. In particular, many of the works seek to advance the study of testing graph properties in the bounded-degree graph model. Other topics in property testing include testing group properties and testing properties of affine subspaces.