George Robert Blakley Jr. is an American cryptographer and a professor of mathematics at Texas A&M University

Texas A&M University

Texas A&M University is a coeducational public research university located in College Station, Texas . It is the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System. The sixth-largest university in the United States, A&M's enrollment for Fall 2011 was over 50,000 for the first time in school...

, best known for inventing a secret sharing

Secret sharing

Secret sharing refers to method for distributing a secret amongst a group of participants, each of whom is allocated a share of the secret. The secret can be reconstructed only when a sufficient number of shares are combined together; individual shares are of no use on their own.More formally, in a...

 scheme in 1979.

Biography

Blakley did his undergraduate studies in physics at Georgetown University

Georgetown University

Georgetown University is a private, Jesuit, research university whose main campus is in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic university in the United States...

, and received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Maryland

University of Maryland

When the term "University of Maryland" is used without any qualification, it generally refers to the University of Maryland, College Park.University of Maryland may refer to the following:...

 in 1960. After postdoctoral studies at Cornell University

Cornell University

Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

 and Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

, he held faculty positions at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and the State University of New York at Buffalo

University at Buffalo, The State University of New York

University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, also commonly known as the University at Buffalo or UB, is a public research university and a "University Center" in the State University of New York system. The university was founded by Millard Fillmore in 1846. UB has multiple campuses...

 before joining Texas A&M in 1970. At Texas A&M, he was chairman of the mathematics department from 1970 to 1978.

Blakley served on the board of directors of the International Association for Cryptologic Research

International Association for Cryptologic Research

The International Association for Cryptologic Research is a non-profit scientific organization whose purpose is to further research in cryptology and related fields...

 from 1993 to 1995. He co-founded the International Journal of Information Security, published by Springer-Verlag, in 2000, and continues to serve on its advisory board.

His son, George Robert (Bob) Blakley III, is also a computer security researcher.

Secret-sharing scheme

In order to split a secret into several shares, Blakley's scheme specifies the secret as a point in n-dimensional space, and gives out shares that correspond to hyperplane

Hyperplane

A hyperplane is a concept in geometry. It is a generalization of the plane into a different number of dimensions.A hyperplane of an n-dimensional space is a flat subset with dimension n − 1...

s that intersect the secret point. Any n such hyperplanes will specify the point, while fewer than n hyperplanes will leave at least one degree of freedom, and thus leave the point unspecified.

In contrast, Shamir

Adi Shamir

Adi Shamir is an Israeli cryptographer. He is a co-inventor of the RSA algorithm , a co-inventor of the Feige–Fiat–Shamir identification scheme , one of the inventors of differential cryptanalysis and has made numerous contributions to the fields of cryptography and computer...

's secret sharing scheme

Shamir's Secret Sharing

Shamir's Secret Sharing is an algorithm in cryptography. It is a form of secret sharing, where a secret is divided into parts, giving each participant its own unique part, where some of the parts or all of them are needed in order to reconstruct the secret....

 represents the secret as the y-intercept of an n-degree

Degree of a polynomial

The degree of a polynomial represents the highest degree of a polynominal's terms , should the polynomial be expressed in canonical form . The degree of an individual term is the sum of the exponents acting on the term's variables...

 polynomial, and shares correspond to points on the polynomial.

Awards and honors

In 2001 Blakley received an honorary doctorate from Queensland University of Technology

Queensland University of Technology

Queensland University of Technology is an Australian university with an applied emphasis in courses and research. Based in Brisbane, it has 40,000 students, including 6,000 international students, over 4,000 staff members, and an annual budget of more than A$750 million.QUT is marketed as "A...

.

In 2009 he was named a fellow

Fellow

A fellow in the broadest sense is someone who is an equal or a comrade. The term fellow is also used to describe a person, particularly by those in the upper social classes. It is most often used in an academic context: a fellow is often part of an elite group of learned people who are awarded...

 of the International Association for Cryptologic Research

International Association for Cryptologic Research

The International Association for Cryptologic Research is a non-profit scientific organization whose purpose is to further research in cryptology and related fields...

.