Station HYPO

John Forbes Nash Jr.
June 13, 1928 – May 23, 2015

John Forbes Nash Jr. was an American mathematician who made fundamental contributions to game theory, differential geometry, and the study of partial differential equations.  In the 1950s, John Nash proposed a new encryption–decryption machine.  The letters show that Nash had anticipated many concepts of modern cryptography, which are based on computational hardness.  In 2011, the National Security Agency (NSA) declassified his letters.  Below is a the copy those letters with NSA’s responses.

PostScript: While serving as a Senior Research Mathematician at Princeton University during the later part of his life, Nash shared the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with game theorists Reinhard Selten and John Harsanyi. In 2015, he also shared the Abel Prize with Louis Nirenberg for his work on nonlinear partial differential equations.