Roger Needham

Infobox_Scientist
name = Roger Needham


caption = Roger Needham in 1999
birth_date = birth date|1935|2|9|df=y
birth_place =
death_date = death date and age|2003|3|1|1935|2|9|df=y
death_place = Willingham, Cambridgeshire
residence = United Kingdom
nationality = British
field = Computer science
work_institution = University of Cambridge, Microsoft
alma_mater = University of Cambridge
doctoral_advisor =
doctoral_students =
known_for = BAN logic, TEA and XTEA encryption algorithms
prizes = Commander of the Order of the British Empire
religion =
footnotes = Wife: Karen Spärck Jones

Roger Michael Needham CBE FREng FRS (9 February, 1935 – 1 March, 2003) was a British computer scientist.

Needham began his undergraduate studies at the University of Cambridge in 1953, graduating with a B.A. in 1956 in mathematics and philosophy. His Ph.D. thesis was on applications of digital computers to the automatic classification and retrieval of documents. He worked on a variety of key computing projects in security, operating systems, computer architecture (capability systems) and local area networks.

Among his theoretical contributions is the development of the Burrows-Abadi-Needham logic for authentication, generally known as the BAN logic. His Needham-Schroeder (coinvented with Michael Schroeder) security protocol forms the basis of the Kerberos authentication and key exchange system. He also codesigned the TEA and XTEA encryption algorithms.

He joined Cambridge's Computer Laboratory, then called the Mathematical Laboratory, in 1962, became head of the laboratory in 1980, was made a professor in 1981 and remained with the laboratory until his retirement in 1995. Needham then set up Microsoft's UK-based Research Laboratory in 1997. He was also one of the founding Fellows of Wolfson College, Cambridge.

Needham was elected to the Royal Society in 1985, became a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 1993 and received a CBE for his contributions to computing in 2001. He also was a longtime and respected member of the International Association for Cryptologic Research and the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Security and Privacy. He was made a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery in 1994. [http://www.acm.org/announcements/needham_obit.html] Needham was married to Karen Spärck Jones.

Needham died of cancer in March 2003 at his home in Willingham, Cambridgeshire. The British Computer Society, in 2004, established an annual "Roger Needham Lecture" in his honour.

ee also

* Maurice Wilkes (colleague)
* David Wheeler (colleague)

External links

* [http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/ksj/RogerNeedham.html Information about Roger Needham provided by his wife]
* [http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/29535.html Obit: Roger Needham] , "The Register", March 2, 2003
* [http://www.businessweekly.co.uk/news/view_article.asp?article_id=7433 Roger Needham Dies] , "Business Weekly", March 3, 2003
* [http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/06/obituaries/06NEED.html Roger Needham, Computer Security Expert, Dies at 68] , "The New York Times", March 6, 2003
* [http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/134646807_needham06.html Microsoft's Needham dies from cancer] , "The Seattle Times", March 6, 2003
* [http://www.lboro.ac.uk/service/publicity/degree_days/degree_2001/needham.html Speech presenting Needham with an honorary degree] , Loughborough University, July 13, 2001

Persondata
NAME=Needham, Roger
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
SHORT DESCRIPTION=Computer scientist
DATE OF BIRTH=February 9 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH=
DATE OF DEATH=March 1 2003
PLACE OF DEATH=Willingham, Cambridgeshire