Introduction to ciphers and substitution. Alice and Bob and Carl and Julius: terminology and Caesar Cipher ; The key to the matter: generalizing the Caesar Cipher ; Multiplicative ciphers ; Affine ...

One influential image that is popular among scientists is the view that mathematics is the language of nature. The present article discusses another possible way to approach the relation between ...

Recently, I co-authored and published a math paper that solved a 15-year-old mystery. But, unlike a book or a gadget, the work cannot be copyrighted or bought and sold. In fact, my co-author and I ...

Quantum computing is widely believed to be a revolutionary new technology. In fact, it is a double-edged sword. If efficient quantum computers can be manufactured in near future, many of the current ...

The latest Snowden document is the US intelligence "black budget." There's a lot of information in the few pages the Washington Post decided to publish, including an introduction by Director of ...

Last fall, for my first-year writing seminar on the history and mathematics of cryptography, I posted my students’ expository-writing essays on our course blog. The assignment had asked students to ...