Ralph C. Merkle Email: merkle@merkle.com Home page: www.merkle.com

Research interests

I have a broad interest in computer security and a particular interest in cryptography, having co-invented public key cryptography (for which I received the ACM Kanellakis Award, the IEEE Kobayashi Award, and the 2000 RSA Award in Mathematics). I also invented Merkle trees. A C program that implements a digital signature using Merkle trees is available. See Handbook of Applied Cryptography for an excellent technical treatment of cryptographic methods, and Crypto for a great read about the people involved.

I'm also interested in molecular manufacturing (also called nanotechnology or molecular nanotechnology). The central objective of molecular manufacturing is the design, modeling, and manufacture of systems that can inexpensively fabricate most products that can be specified in molecular detail. This would include, for example, molecular logic elements connected in complex patterns to form molecular computers, molecular robotic arms or Stewart platforms (e.g., positional devices) able to position individual atoms or clusters of atoms under programmatic control (useful if we wish to make molecular computers and other molecular manufacturing systems), and a wide range of other molecular devices. A central concept for achieving low cost in molecular manufacturing is that of massive parallelism, either by self replicating manufacturing systems or convergent assembly. Such systems are today theoretical, but should revolutionize 21st century manufacturing. The marginal manufacturing costs for such systems should be quite small, although initial R&D costs might be quite significant. I served for several years as an executive editor of the journal Nanotechnology. I chaired both the Fourth and Fifth Foresight Conferences on Molecular Nanotechnology; and won the 1998 Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology for theory.

Other interests

I'm also interested in cryonics (an Alcor Director since May 21, 1998; and chaired the fourth and fifth Alcor conferences), medical applications of nanotechnology, computational chemistry, reversible computing, extropians, and other areas. My wife is Carol Shaw. My sister, Judith Merkle Riley, writes historical novels (1, 2, 3, 4). My father, Theodore Charles Merkle, ran Project Pluto. My great uncle was Fred Merkle, of baseball fame. My great grandfather emigrated from Switzerland in the 1860's. Some incorrect negative forecasts of future technology.

Papers, Patents, Education and work