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Shafi Goldwasser
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Shafi Goldwasser

Cryptographer who co-invented zero-knowledge proofs

14 November 1958 United States Verified by our editors
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67 yrs
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Shafi Goldwasser is an American-Israeli computer scientist who, with Silvio Micali, laid the mathematical foundations of modern cryptography and co-invented zero-knowledge proofs, which let someone prove a statement without revealing anything else. She shared the 2012 Turing Award with Micali.

Biography

Education

Goldwasser was born in New York and grew up partly in Israel. She studied mathematics at Carnegie Mellon and earned her PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1984 under Manuel Blum.

Provable security

With Silvio Micali she defined what it means for encryption to be secure in a precise mathematical sense and introduced probabilistic encryption (1982), where the same message encrypts differently each time. Their framework is the basis of modern cryptography.

Zero-knowledge proofs

In 1985, with Micali and Charles Rackoff, she introduced interactive and zero-knowledge proofs. Today zero-knowledge proofs are used in privacy-preserving technologies and blockchain systems.

Career

She has been a professor at MIT and the Weizmann Institute and directed the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing at Berkeley from 2018. She has won the Gödel Prize twice.

Timeline

  1. 1958

    Born in New York City, United States

  2. 1982

    Probabilistic encryption with Micali

  3. 1984

    PhD from UC Berkeley

  4. 1985

    Zero-knowledge proofs

  5. 1993

    First Gödel Prize

  6. 2001

    Second Gödel Prize

  7. 2012

    Turing Award

  8. 2018

    Director of the Simons Institute

Notable works

  • 1984

    Probabilistic Encryption Paper

    With Silvio Micali.

  • 1985

    The Knowledge Complexity of Interactive Proof Systems Paper

    With Micali and Rackoff.

Awards and honours

  • Gödel Prize

    1993

  • Grace Murray Hopper Award

    1996

  • Turing Award

    2012

Did you know?

  1. 1

    She is the third woman to win the Turing Award.

  2. 2

    Zero-knowledge proofs are used in some cryptocurrencies to hide transaction details.

  3. 3

    She co-founded the security company Duality Technologies.

Connections

Related people

Also born on 14 November

Frequently asked

Who is Shafi Goldwasser?

Shafi Goldwasser is an American-Israeli computer scientist who, with Silvio Micali, laid the mathematical foundations of modern cryptography and co-invented zero-knowledge proofs, which let someone prove a statement without revealing anything else. She shared the 2012 Turing Award with Micali.

How old is Shafi Goldwasser?

Shafi Goldwasser is 67 years old, born on 14 November 1958 in New York City, United States.

Where is Shafi Goldwasser from?

Shafi Goldwasser was born in New York City, United States.

What is Shafi Goldwasser known for?

Shafi Goldwasser is best known for Zero-knowledge proofs; probabilistic encryption; foundations of modern cryptography; Turing Award 2012.

What awards has Shafi Goldwasser received?

Notable honours include Gödel Prize (1993), Grace Murray Hopper Award (1996), Turing Award (2012).

References

  1. Shafi Goldwasser — Wikipedia. Wikipedia. Retrieved 4 November 2026.
  2. Official website. people.csail.mit.edu. Retrieved 4 November 2026.
  3. Shafi Goldwasser (Q11609) — structured data. Wikidata. Retrieved 4 November 2026.

Includes material from the Wikipedia article “Shafi Goldwasser”, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. That text is available under the same licence. Learn more

External links

Official website Website Wikipedia
Filed under CryptographyMITTuring AwardWomen in computing Computer ScientistCryptographerProfessor

About this profile

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“Shafi Goldwasser.” TrackFame, last updated 5 November 2026. https://trackfame.com/person/shafi-goldwasser

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