Leonard Max Adleman American computer scientist Date of Birth: 31.12.1945 Country: USA

1. Leonard Max Adleman: A Biography
2. Early Education and Career
3. Academic Career
4. Advancement in DNA Computing
5. Contributions to Computer Virology and HIV Research
6. Recognition and Achievements

Leonard Max Adleman: A Biography

Leonard Max Adleman, an American theoretical scientist in the field of computer science, is widely recognized as the co-author of the RSA encryption system (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman, 1977) and DNA computing. He was born in California in 1945 and grew up in San Francisco.

Early Education and Career

After completing his school education, Adleman enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley. Initially, he had considered pursuing a career in chemistry, then medicine, before finally deciding on mathematics. Adleman received his bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1968. After completing this degree, he worked as a programmer at the Bank of America. During this time, he also attended medical school but later changed his mind and decided to become a physicist. He took lessons at the State University of San Francisco but found physics to be unsuitable for him. "I don't like conducting experiments; I enjoy thinking about things," he said. He then returned to Berkeley, where he earned his Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science in 1976 and wrote a dissertation on "Theoretical Aspects of Computational Complexity."

Academic Career

Following his Ph.D., Adleman joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as an instructor. In 1977, he became an assistant professor of mathematics and, in 1979, an associate professor. In 1980, Adleman accepted a position at the University of Southern California (USC), where he became a professor of computer science and molecular biology. In 1983, he was promoted to a full professor and held the Henry Salvatori Professorship of Computer Science. Throughout his career, Adleman's main focus was theoretical computer science, particularly the complexity of certain theoretical problems, which formed the basis for his notable contributions to cryptography. He was one of the developers of the RSA cryptosystem, along with Ronald Rivest and Adi Shamir. This encryption algorithm was developed in 1976 at MIT. For their contribution to the invention of the RSA cryptosystem, Adleman, along with Rivest and Shamir, was awarded the Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award in 1996 and the Turing Award in 2002, often referred to as the Nobel Prize of computer science.

Advancement in DNA Computing

In 1994, Adleman published a paper titled "Molecular Computation of Solutions to Combinatorial Problems," which described the experimental application of DNA as a computational system. In this paper, he solved the Hamiltonian path problem for a case with seven vertices, which is an NP-complete problem similar to the traveling salesman problem. Although the solution for this case was trivial, this work demonstrated the successful application of DNA for algorithmic computations. It showed that DNA computing has the potential to solve other large-scale combinatorial search problems. In 2002, Adleman and his research group successfully solved a "non-trivial" problem using DNA computing. Specifically, they solved a 20-variable Boolean satisfiability problem with over one million potential solutions. They synthesized a pool of DNA strands, which represented the solution space of the problem, and then processed this pool algorithmically using biochemical methods to filter out "incorrect" strands, leaving only the ones that "satisfied" the problem. Analyzing the nucleotide sequence of these remaining strands revealed the "correct" solutions to the original problem.

Contributions to Computer Virology and HIV Research

Adleman is also known for coining the term "computer virus" after encountering one created by his student Fred Cohen in 1983. Cohen and Adleman decided to publish the code of this virus, believing it to be work on information preparation and dissemination. Adleman felt that computer viruses could open up many possibilities, and the potential benefits derived from them in future technologies could outweigh the negative aspects of their use. As a result of his work in molecular biology, Adleman developed a mathematical model of immune deficiency caused by the HIV virus. This provided an understanding of how the virus works and opened up various research directions for finding treatment methods. Adleman, along with David Wofsy from the University of California, San Francisco, described the results of testing their hypotheses in February 1993 in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes. Unfortunately, the feedback from the research community regarding Adleman's ideas was discouraging. Undeterred, Adleman decided to gain a deeper understanding of HIV biology to be more convincing. He entered the Molecular Biology Laboratory at the University of Southern California and began studying modern biological methods under the guidance of Nickolas Chelyapov, who is currently a senior research scientist in Adleman's own lab.

Recognition and Achievements

Adleman is also notable for describing a new method for establishing whether a number is prime, which he considers one of his proudest accomplishments. He served as a mathematics consultant on the Hollywood movie "Sneakers," which pertained to cryptography. As of the early 21st century, Adleman continued to work at the University of Southern California. He currently resides in Los Angeles with his wife and has three children. In 2006, Adleman was elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has received numerous awards and honors throughout his career, including the Turing Award in 2002, the IEEE Kobayashi Award for Computers and Communications in 2000, and the Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award in 1996. Adleman has also been recognized as a distinguished alumnus of the College of Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1995.