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I am reading a book about blockchain. It said the asymmetric cryptography was invented by Whitefield Dime and Martin Herman in 1976. But I cannot find these two guys. Furthermore, what I know was RSA who invented asymmetric cryptography in 1978?

Quant
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    Various algorithms were invented by different people, both in the public and in classified military departments, so it's not meaningful to attribute the invention of PKC to any specific person or team. – DannyNiu Dec 15 '23 at 03:03
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    That's Whitfield (one e) Diffie (no m) and Martin Hellman (no r) and they were first to publish an academic paper with working PKC. This is explained in wikipedia with links to detailed articles on each man, so I guess you put zero effort into this. RSA were second to publish but had greater commercial success for a good while. See also https://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/66810/what-motivated-the-creation-of-rsa-and-ecdh?rq=1 and https://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/64155/is-rsa-inspired-by-diffie-hellman?rq=1 . – dave_thompson_085 Dec 15 '23 at 03:33
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    @dave_thompson_085 Thanks. The book I read is a lousy translation in Chinese. They apparently spelled their name wrong (and I also made mistake), hence I cannot find them.. Thanks. – Quant Dec 15 '23 at 07:56
  • Why does it matter who invented it? It is now widely accepted that it was, in fact, not Diffie and Hellman who first invented it, but Ellis, Williamson, and Cocks at the British GCHQ about 6 years earlier. The British government didn't see a practical application, so they never developed it, and the GCHQ being an intelligence service, the algorithms were classified until 1997, so they weren't published until long after Diffie-Hellman and RSA had independently re-discovered it. – Jörg W Mittag Dec 16 '23 at 08:40

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Diffie and Hellman: Conceptualization and initial public-key exchange method. RSA: First practical and widely adopted public-key encryption/decryption algorithm. Both milestones were crucial in revolutionizing secure communication and laying the foundation for modern cryptography.

user1850484
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