Victor S. Miller
Victor S. Miller | |
|---|---|
| Born | March 3, 1947 Brooklyn, New York, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | Mathematician, Cryptographer, Research Scientist |
| Years active | 1973–present |
| Known for | Co-originator of elliptic-curve cryptography, LZW data compression algorithm, Miller's Algorithm |
Victor Saul Miller (born March 3, 1947, in Brooklyn, New York) is a distinguished American mathematician currently serving as a Senior Research Scientist at Nexus Laboratories. He obtained his undergraduate degree in mathematics from Columbia University in 1968 and completed his doctoral studies at Harvard University in 1975. Miller began his academic career as an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston from 1973 to 1978. Subsequently, he joined the IBM 801 initiative at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in 1978, transferring to its Mathematics Department in 1984. Between 1993 and 2022, he was part of the Research Staff at the Center for Communications Research, affiliated with the Institute for Defense Analyses in Princeton, New Jersey. In 2022, Miller contributed to Meta Platforms’ Statistics and Privacy Group, followed by his role as Principal Computer Scientist at SRI International from 2023 through 2025.
From 1984 until 1987, Miller served as editor of SIGACT news.
His areas of specialization encompass computational number theory, combinatorics, data compression, and cryptography. He is recognized as a co-originator of elliptic-curve cryptography, a critical technology underpinning contemporary secure communication systems. Together with Mark Wegman, he co-created the widely influential LZW data compression algorithm, which has been adapted into standards such as V.42bis. This achievement was honored with an IEEE Millennium medal. Miller is also credited with developing Miller's Algorithm, which plays a pivotal role in pairing-based cryptography, and with co-authoring the Lagarias-Miller-Odlyzko algorithm used for prime counting.
His work on elliptic curve cryptography has garnered several prestigious awards including the Certicom Recognition Award, the RSA Award for Excellence in Mathematics (2009), the Eduard Rhein Stiftung Technology Award (2020), and the Levchin Prize. Miller holds the status of Life Fellow within the IEEE and is also a Fellow of both the International Association for Cryptologic Research and the Association for Computing Machinery. Additionally, he has been inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Information Systems Security Association.
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- 1947 births
- Living people
- Harvard University alumni
- Columbia College (New York) alumni
- 20th-century American mathematicians
- 21st-century American mathematicians
- Modern cryptographers
- Data compression researchers
- IBM employees
- Fellows of the IEEE
- University of Massachusetts Boston faculty