Name Horst Feistel Role Cryptographer | ||
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Education Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology | ||
Alma mater MITHarvard University | ||
Feistel Cipher and Data Encryption Standard (DES)
Horst Feistel (January 30, 1915 – November 14, 1990) was a German-born cryptographer who worked on the design of ciphers at IBM, initiating research that culminated in the development of the Data Encryption Standard (DES) in the 1970s.
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Life and work
Feistel was born in Berlin, Germany in 1915, and moved to the United States in 1934. During World War II, he was placed under house arrest, but nevertheless gained U.S. citizenship on 31 January 1944. The following day he was granted a security clearance and began work for the U.S. Air Force Cambridge Research Center (AFCRC) on Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) devices until the 1950s. He was subsequently employed at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory, then the MITRE corporation. Finally, he moved to IBM, where he received an award for his cryptographic work. His research at IBM led to the development of the Lucifer and Data Encryption Standard (DES) ciphers. Feistel was one of the earliest non-government researchers to study the design and theory of block ciphers.
Feistel lent his name to the Feistel network construction, a common method for constructing block ciphers (for example DES).
Feistel obtained a bachelor's degree at MIT, and his master's at Harvard, both in physics. He married Leona (Gage) in 1945, with whom he had a daughter, Peggy.