Browse School of Humanities and Sciences

Martin Hellman

Professor of Electrical Engineering, Emeritus

BioMartin E. Hellman is Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University and is affiliated with the university's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). His most recent work, "Rethinking National Security," identifies a number of questionable assumptions that are largely taken as axiomatic truths. A key part of that work brings a risk informed framework to a potential failure of nuclear deterrence and then finds surprising ways to reduce the risk. His earlier work included co-inventing public key cryptography, the technology that underlies the secure portion of the Internet. His many honors include election to the National Academy of Engineering and receiving (jointly with his colleague Whit Diffie) the million dollar ACM Turing Award, the top prize in computer science. In 2016, he and his wife of fifty years published "A New Map for Relationships: Creating True Love at Home & Peace on the Planet," providing a “unified field theory” for peace by illuminating the connections between nuclear war, conventional war, interpersonal war, and war within our own psyches.