Page 35 - Ramanujan Yatra
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Ramanujan
YATRA
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mathematicians who had done much of the pioneering work in this area during the 1950s.
Modern-day cryptography involves a public key used for encryption of the plain text into cypher text and another key called the private key, used by the receiver to decrypt the cipher text to read the message and a trapdoor algorithm. Multiplication of two prime numbers is easy; however, finding their prime factor is very tough. The trapdoor algorithms use such processes where it is accessible in one direction (encryption), hard on the other (decryption). Amazingly, a straight line intersecting an elliptic curve at two points uniquely intersects at a third point. This unique property of the elliptic curves is exploited to build modern- day Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) that secures our internet transactions.
Ramanujan passed away hundred years ago. Yet his work inspires generations of mathematicians.
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Dr T.V. Venkateswaran is with Vigyan Prasar, national institute for science communication, New Delhi. He is a science communicator, writer and scicom trainer. His research area includes science education and history of science in pre modern and colonial India. He conducts a weekly TV show ‘Eureka- conversation with Indian scientists’ and writes regularly in various periodicals.
