Bailey Whitfield Diffie

Pioneer of public-key cryptography, Diffie co-authored the landmark 1976 paper "New Directions in Cryptography," which introduced a radically new method of distributing cryptographic keys, going far toward solving one of the fundamental problems of cryptography, key distribution. It has become known as Diffie–Hellman key exchange. The article also appeared to have stimulated the almost immediate public development of a new class of encryption algorithms, the asymmetric key algorithms.

In 1991 he joined Sun Microsystems Laboratories (in Menlo Park, California) as a Distinguished Engineer, working primarily on public policy aspects of cryptography. Diffie went on to serve as Sun's Chief Security Officer and as a Vice President until November 2009.