Taher Elgamal

From CryptoDox, The Online Encyclopedia on Cryptography and Information Security

Dr. Taher Elgamal (Arabic: طاهر الجمل) (born 18 August 1955) is an Egyptian American cryptographer. Elgamal is sometimes seen as El Gamal or ElGamal, but Elgamal is now preferred. In 1985, Elgamal published a paper titled A Public key Cryptosystem and A Signature Scheme based on discrete Logarithms in which he proposed the design of the ElGamal discrete log cryptosystem and of the ElGamal signature scheme. The latter scheme became the basis for Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA) adopted by NIST as the Digital Signature Standard (DSS). He also participated in the 'SET' credit card payment protocol, plus a number of Internet payment schemes.