Introduction Achievements and Papers Bibliography and Links People

Dr. Leon Adleman is currently a “Henri Salvatori” professor of Molecular Biology and Computer Science at the University of South California. He is also a recipient of the 2002 Touring award, which is commonly considered the Nobel Prize of computer science along with Ronald Rivest and Adi Shamir. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Adleman attended the University of California, Berkley where he earned his Bachelor’s degree in mathematics in 1968 and his Ph.D in computer science in 1976 both from the University of California-Berkley, his Ph.D thesis was on “Number Theoretic Aspects of Computational Complexity”, his thesis advisor was Manuel Blum. Before being a professor at the University of South California he was a professor of Mathematics at MIT from 1976-1980. In 1980 he accepted the post of associate professor with tenure at USC and has been there since then. In 1981, Fred Cohen, one of Adleman’s students has credited him with coining the term “virus.” He is best known for being the co-inventor of the RSA cryptosystem and inventor of DNA Computing, he also served as the mathematical consultant for the movie Sneakers.