Cryptography: The Science of Secrecy

For thousands of years, people have been sending secret messages to one another. The ability to communicate secretly has always been important for military and security reasons, and has become even more important in the age of the internet, e-commerce, and electronic voting. In this seminar, we will look at some of the ways that mathematics has been used to communicate in secret in the past and ways that it may be used in the future-ranging from the ancient Egyptians and Romans to World War II to the possibility of quantum computers. We will also discuss the ways that these technological advancements have affected society and vice versa.