John Nash's Declassified 1955 Letter To the NSA

An anonymous reader writes "In 1955, John Nash sent an amazing letter (PDF) to the NSA in order to support an encryption design that he suggested. In it, he anticipates computational complexity theory as well as modern cryptography. He also proposes that the security of encryption can be based on computational hardness and makes the distinction between polynomial time and exponential time: 'So a logical way to classify enciphering processes is by the way in which the computation length for the computation of the key increases with increasing length of the key. This is at best exponential and at worst probably at most a relatively small power of r, ar^2 or ar^3, as in substitution ciphers.'"

Comments

Listening to People outside the Norm

[BoRegardless]

I think overtly creative people get to be that way partly because they are not "normal". It is their gift or mindset to be able to see, conjecture and analyze what others can not fathom.

Yet we tend to shy away from anyone who is "not normal". I am glad Mr. Nash has been able to proceed in his career in spite of his problems. I hope his story gives others with problems some inspiration.

Re:Listening to People outside the Norm

[rssrss]

Mr. Nash's creativity and his illness were two different things. There are many people with the same illness that he had, which appeared to be a form of schizophrenia, who have no creative accomplishments, just delusions, illness, and death.

Mr. Nash spent many years in the grip of delusions and manias. He was, after a very long time able to achieve the ability to live with his family, interact with his community, and work on Mathematics.

That he was able to do so speaks well of both his family and his community. Most people with his illness do not. They wind up institutionalized, or, what is worse, homeless, uncared for, subject to substance abuse and other illnesses, and premature death.

Re:Listening to People outside the Norm

[Xtifr]

You forgot: self-diagnosed "Aspie" with an unearned superiority complex.

Ironically, in my experience, the majority of self-diagnosed "Aspies" seem to be perfectly normal people who chose to focus on academics to the exclusion of social skills because they didn't have what it takes to master both. Nevertheless, geeks with social skills are, in my experience, the vast majority. For every John Nash, there are dozens of Richard Feynmans. Asocial geeks tend not to realize this because, well, because they don't get out much. (And because they watch too many Hollywood movies.) :)

Re:Hand writing

[Anonymous Coward]

Nash would have used Beamer, not Powerpoint.

Re:(Read all of it) Nash gets form letter rejectio

[Hentes]

They hint that they have found a weakness in it, but for some reason they don't disclose it. It might be the case that the NSA wanted to keep it secret, just like the British did.

Re:(Read all of it) Nash gets form letter rejectio

[interval1066]

Or, they simply wanted to butter him up and keep him quiet because the presiding industrial defence complex entities at the time (Westinghouse, GE, Hughes, Bell Telephone (or later, AT&T), etc.) already had inferior, but completed cryptographic solutions ready to go. How many times has the Fed been handed elegant solutions to problems only to pass them by for fixes given to them by men from the old boy's network?