Mathematics of Private Communication Talk by Richard Norton

Mathematics of Private Communication Talk

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On Tuesday 19 September Dr Dominic Searles, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Otago, came to LPHS to give a talk about the Mathematics of Private Communication.

Speaking to a group of more than twenty interested students, Dominic told us about how from ancient times Alice and Bob have wanted to communicate privately without Eve eavesdropping. In the 1970s a new type of encryption algorithm was invented, and it is still the basis of e-commerce today. From the simple idea that it’s easy to multiply two big prime numbers together, but practically impossible to reverse this calculation, the product of the two primes is broadcast to everyone so that messages can be encrypted, but only Alice knows the two factor primes that are needed for decryption, so that messages can be sent to Alice quickly and secretly.

Having an academic visitor give a talk at LPHS has become an annual event for our mathematics enrichment programme and we look forward to next year’s visitor.