Photo: Alexander Klink / CC BY 3.0 (source: Wikimedia Commons)

Daniel J. Bernstein

ダニエル・バーンスタイン　/　だにえる・ばーんすたいん

American mathematician

October 29, 1971 (age 54)　・　East Patchogue, New York, United States

New York
mathematician
cryptologist
programmer

My Take

Daniel J. Bernstein is one of those figures I find quietly enormous. Most people will never know his name, yet his software, qmail, djbdns, daemontools, cdb, ran the early internet's plumbing with a near-obsessive focus on security and correctness. What I admire most is his stubbornness. He fought the US government in court over the right to publish encryption code, and that case helped reshape how software is treated as speech. His later cryptography work feeds directly into the post-quantum standards being adopted now. To me he's the rare academic whose principles and code both left permanent marks, and he clearly never softened to fit in.

Overview

Daniel Julius Bernstein (born October 29, 1971) is an American mathematician, cryptologist, and computer scientist. He is a professor of computer science at the University of Illinois Chicago. He was a visiting professor in the department of mathematics and computer science at the Eindhoven University of Technology, and a visiting professor at CASA at Ruhr University Bochum through 2023.

Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

1. Profile

Name (English): Daniel J. Bernstein
Name (Japanese): ダニエル・バーンスタイン
Reading: だにえる・ばーんすたいん
Born: October 29, 1971 (age 54)
Zodiac / Chinese zodiac: Scorpio / Boar
Origin: East Patchogue, New York, United States
Blood type: Private
Height: Private
Agency: Private
Occupation: mathematician / cryptologist / programmer / university teacher / computer scientist

2. Background

Elementary school: Private
Junior high: Private
High school: Bellport High School
University: University of California, Berkeley

3. Relationships

Spouse: Private
Children: Private
Parents: Private
Siblings: Private

4. Personality

Motto

Private

5. Works & records

Category	Title	Role
Notable work	NaCl	—
Notable work	qmail	—
Notable work	djbdns	—
Notable work	ucspi-tcp	—
Notable work	daemontools	—
Notable work	cdb	—

6. Links

Official sitehttps://cr.yp.to/djb.html
Xhttps://x.com/hashbreaker
Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%80%E3%83%8B%E3%82%A8%E3%83%AB%E3%83%BB%E3%83%90%E3%83%BC%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B9%E3%82%BF%E3%82%A4%E3%83%B3

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