Fermat is best known for his famous "Last Theorem" which mathematicians
spent hundreds of years trying to solve. However, it is his "Little
Theorem" having to do with a property of prime numbers which finds use
today in the ever more important area of encryption.
A major problem in modern computing is the privacy of transactions, that is, finding an efficient way to encrypt messages. The goal is to send messages in a form in which only the intended recipient will be able to read the information. We will discuss the method called RSA encryption which uses Fermat's Little Theorem and some other mathematics that was for a long time thought of as having "no real-world application".
Ron Sperber is currently studying for a Ph.D. at SUNY Binghamton with research focused in Topology. He received his B.S. in Mathematics from Rensselaer Polytechnical Institute in 1992 and his M.A. from SUNY Binghamton in 1994. He is a fellow in the "Preparing Future Faculty" Program in the Department of Mathematical Sciences.