rivest

Rivest is a surname of French origin. It is found among French-Canadian communities and in other countries, including the United States. The name is associated with several notable figures in computer science and cryptography.

Ronald L. Rivest (born 1947) is an American cryptographer and a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is one of the co-inventors of the RSA public-key encryption algorithm and co-founded RSA Data Security. In 2002, he, along with Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman, received the Turing Award for the invention of RSA.

The RSA cryptosystem, named after its inventors, is a widely used public-key cryptosystem that enables secure key exchange, encryption, and digital signatures. It remains foundational to Internet security, though its implementations vary and are augmented by other cryptographic techniques.