I recently read Crypto by Steven Levy. While I really enjoyed the whole book, I particularly enjoyed the epilogue. It was extremely well written and organized such that all the things I was scared could happen to be mentioned were avoided.

Essentially, the epilogue is about the folks in the British government who originally discovered public key encryption, or as they called it: Non-Secret Encryption. The things that you fear could be mentioned are things like who’s discovery was more impressive, important or in some way distinguished. You fear to find that the folks working on these things could become jealous of the people who are profiting off of them in the private sector.

Envy is a very hard thing to deal with at times and it’s certainly not something you want to have people who are spending their lives on national security issues to have to deal with. With luck, prescreening and testing, those who are able to work in areas sensitive to national security simply don’t have that temperment. Personally, I feel a key to this is that folks in the public domain don’t hold things like this over the heads of those who worked to achieve essentially the same thing secretly for the government.

As such, I’m really glad that Steven Levy didn’t leave his book without telling the untold story of James H. Ellis and his co-workers who worked on public key encryption. It was a very beautiful story, in my opinion, but then, I think I side more with that temperment. I don’t really need massive public recognition or wealth to be happy though at times I’m sure I wouldn’t mind them. Even if there was something where I felt I did really want public recognition, I can’t picture myself breaking my word to achieve it. Of course, it’s easy for me to say such things since I’ve never been put in that position.

Thus, I am glad that there’s a book out there that shows the character of James Ellis. He wanted to be recognized in some form, but he died before it could happen. He spent years of his life knowing that he was the first person to come up with an idea that was independently discovered and used by someone else to revolutionize the world of cryptography and yet he never broke his word and confirmed his discovery. He is an intellectual martyr in that sense.

Of course, now his discovery is public knowledge and anyone who reads Steven Levy’s book will know about it. I hope that everyone can appreciate how well written that section of the book is and I certainly hope that everyone sees James Ellis and everyone else who works on secret projects for the governement just a little differently as a result.