Talk:Ralph Merkle

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Hey Matt, is it perhaps the case that Martin Hellman was Merkle's advisor? Diffie-Hellman isn't a person. ;-) (I'd have fixed it myself but I suspect you have the reference at hand.) Peter 05:59, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

*grin*! Oops, I'll have to go into the library tomorrow and look it up again to see which of Hellman or Diffie it was... — Matt 17:03, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It has to be Martin Hellman. First, I just sort of know this (but do not have a reference handy, Merkle's thesis doesn't seem to be available). Second, Whitfield Diffie has never been a professor at Stanford. But, it would be nice to find a solid reference before putting the fact in. Peter 18:04, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I fixed the red link for "Merkle trees" to point to my new article on Hash trees since I think they are the same thing. Although I am not entirely sure and will try to verify that. An hour of googling did not give me a conclusive answer. (The only proper description of Merkle Trees I found was on RSA labs site and very confusing.) --Davidgothberg 01:43, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

Ok, update. I found some trustworthy sources and good descriptions: Merkle trees as invented by Merkle is the same thing as hash trees. Aparantly he invented them as a part of a crypto key handling system for signing messages back in the 70's. --David Göthberg 04:23, 23 August 2005 (UTC)