Shafi Goldwasser
Shafi Goldwasser
8 min read
Israeli-American theoretical computer scientist and pioneer of modern cryptography. Co-recipient of the 2012 Turing Award with Silvio Micali, she laid the mathematical foundations of probabilistic cryptography and zero-knowledge proofs.
Key Facts
- Born in 1958 in New York to Israeli immigrant parents
- Completed her doctoral dissertation at Berkeley in 1983, under the supervision of Manuel Blum
- Co-invented with Silvio Micali the notion of semantic security in encryption (1982)
- 2012 Turing Award, the highest honor in computer science, shared with Silvio Micali
- Professor at MIT and at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel
Works & Achievements
A landmark paper published in the Journal of Computer and System Sciences, establishing for the first time a rigorous mathematical definition of the security of an encryption scheme. This work transformed cryptography from an empirical art into an exact science.
A paper presented at STOC 1985 introducing the concept of zero-knowledge proofs, which allow one to prove knowledge of a secret without revealing any information about that secret. Considered one of the most influential papers in the entire history of computer science.
Demonstrates the equivalence between two models of interactive proof systems, deepening the theory of interactive complexity and laying groundwork for the PCP theorem.
A cryptography course that has become a worldwide reference, freely distributed on the Internet from MIT. These teaching notes have trained generations of engineers and researchers in computer security.
A body of research on techniques for performing computations on encrypted data without decrypting it, paving the way for confidential data processing in the cloud.
Anecdotes
In 1982, at the University of California at Berkeley, Shafi Goldwasser and Silvio Micali asked themselves a question that seemed almost absurd: is it possible to prove that you know a secret without ever revealing it? This apparently paradoxical question would give birth to “zero-knowledge proofs,” a concept as baffling as a magic trick made rigorous by mathematics.
At the STOC conference in 1985, Goldwasser presented with Micali and Rackoff the foundational paper on zero-knowledge proofs. The audience, though accustomed to mathematical abstractions, was left astounded: it was now proven that one could convince someone of a truth without giving them any information about how one knows it. This result, dismissed by some as too abstract, would become thirty years later a cornerstone of blockchain security.
In 2012, the Association for Computing Machinery awarded her the Turing Award alongside Silvio Micali — the computing equivalent of the Nobel Prize. Goldwasser is one of the very few women to have received this distinction since its creation in 1966, a crowning achievement for theoretical work long considered too abstract to be of practical use… before becoming the mathematical foundation of Internet security.
Goldwasser long led a dual academic life, teaching simultaneously at MIT in Cambridge (Massachusetts) and at the Weizmann Institute in Israel, crossing the Atlantic several times a year. Born in New York, raised in Israel, trained at Carnegie Mellon then Berkeley, she embodies that generation of researchers whose biography is as international as their networks of collaboration.
Primary Sources
We propose a novel framework for the study of computational difficulty of decrypting encrypted messages. Our framework allows for the first time a rigorous proof that a cryptosystem is secure.
In this paper we study the information complexity of interactive proof systems. We introduce a new measure, called knowledge complexity, which measures the amount of knowledge communicated from the prover to the verifier during an interactive proof.
We study the difference in power between interactive proof systems where the verifier's random choices are public and those where they are private, and show that these two types of systems have the same power.
Cryptography is now a mathematical science. We can prove theorems about the security of cryptographic protocols. The field has been transformed from an art practiced by a few to a rigorous science accessible to all.
Key Places
Goldwasser earned her bachelor's degree in mathematics here in 1979. It was here that she discovered theoretical computer science and decided to pursue it for her doctoral studies.
She completed her doctorate in computer science here under the supervision of Manuel Blum, awarded in 1984. It was during these years that her foundational work on probabilistic encryption, developed with Silvio Micali, first took shape.
The Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT has been her primary workplace since 1983. There she leads the cryptography and theoretical computer science group and has trained generations of researchers.
She holds a professorial chair there alongside her position at MIT, maintaining a strong connection with the Israeli scientific community. This dual affiliation reflects the international dimension of her career.
The city where Goldwasser grew up after her family emigrated from New York. Her Israeli upbringing shaped her worldview and her path toward mathematics.