Neal Koblitz

Neal I. Koblitz (born December 24, 1948) is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Washington.

He is also an adjunct professor with the Centre for Applied Cryptographic Research at the University of Waterloo.

He is the creator of hyperelliptic curve cryptography and the independent co-creator of elliptic curve cryptography.

While at Harvard, he was a Putnam Fellow in 1968.

Koblitz received his B.A. in mathematics from Harvard University in 1969.

He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1974 under the direction of Nick Katz.

From 1975 to 1979 he was an instructor at Harvard University.

In 1979 he began working at the University of Washington.

Koblitz's 1981 article "Mathematics as Propaganda" criticized the misuse of mathematics in the social sciences and helped motivate Serge Lang's successful challenge to the nomination of political scientist Samuel P. Huntington to the National Academy of Sciences.

In The Mathematical Intelligencer, Koblitz, Steven Weintraub, and Saunders Mac Lane later criticized the arguments of Herbert A. Simon, who had attempted to defend Huntington's work.

It was financed from the royalties of Ann Hibner Koblitz's 1983 biography of Sofia Kovalevskaia.

He co-invented elliptic-curve cryptography in 1985 with Victor S. Miller, and for this was awarded the Levchin Prize in 2021.

With his wife Ann Hibner Koblitz, he in 1985 founded the Kovalevskaia Prize to honor women scientists in developing countries.

Although the awardees have ranged over many fields of science, one of the 2011 winners was a Vietnamese mathematician, Lê Thị Thanh Nhàn.

Koblitz is an atheist.