Roger Michael Needham

Head of Cambridge University Computing Laboratory and designer of influential cryptography and security systems, Needham was a major figure in computer science. A Mathematics and Philosophy graduate from Cambridge University in the 1950s, he earned a PhD on Information Retrieval. He worked on a variety of key computing projects in security, operating systems, computer architecture (capability systems), and local area networks.

Among his theoretical contributions was the development of the Burrows-Abadi-Needham logic for authentication, generally known as the BAN logic. His Needham-Schroeder protocol (co-invented with Michael Schroeder) formed the basis of the Kerberos authentication and key exchange system. Needham also codesigned the TEA and XTEA encryption algorithms. He became head of the Laboratory in 1980.

He was elected as Fellow of the Royal Society in 1985 and was awarded the CBE in 2001 for services to computing. The British Computer Society, in 2004, established an annual Roger Needham Award in his honour.

Although best known for his work in cryptography, Roger Michael Needham made contributions to many areas of computer science.