Rob Matheson | MIT News Office

Vinod Vaikuntanathan is using number theory and other mathematical concepts to fortify encryption so it can be used for new applications and stand up to even the toughest adversaries. As a boy growing up in a small South Indian village, Vinod Vaikuntanathan taught himself calculus by reading books his grandfather left lying around the house. Years later in college, he toiled away in the library studying number theory, which deals with the properties and relationships of numbers, primarily positive integers. This field of study naturally steered Vaikuntanathan toward what he calls “the most important application of number theory in the modern world”: cryptography.

Complete article from MIT News.