Roger Needham

About

Roger M Needham, born 1935, was in computing at Cambridge since 1956. His 1961 PhD thesis was on the application of digital computers to problems of classification and grouping. He worked on a variety of key computing projects in security, operating systems, computer architecture (capability systems) and local area networks.

In 1962 he joined the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory (opens in new tab), then called the Mathematical Laboratory and was made Professor of Computer Systems in 1981, and remained with the laboratory taking on leading roles in operating systems, time sharing systems, memory protection, local area networks, and distributed systems until his retirement in 1995.

In 1997, he set up and served as managing director of the Microsoft Research Limited lab in Cambridge (opens in new tab).

Among his theoretical contributions was the development of the Burrows-Abadi-Needham (opens in new tab) logic for authentication, generally known as the BAN logic. His Needham–Schroeder (opens in new tab) (co-invented with Michael Schroeder) security protocol forms the basis of the Kerberos authentication and key exchange system. He also co-designed the TEA and XTEA encryption algorithms. He pioneered the technique of protecting passwords using a one-way hash function.

Needham was a founding Fellow of University College, Cambridge, which later became Wolfson College (opens in new tab). He was elected to the Royal Society (opens in new tab) in 1985, became a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (opens in new tab) in 1993, and received a CBE (opens in new tab) for his contributions to computing in 2001. He also was a longtime and respected member of the International Association for Cryptologic Research (opens in new tab), the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Security and Privacy (opens in new tab) and the University Grants Committee (opens in new tab). He was made a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (opens in new tab) in 1994.

Needham held honorary doctorate degrees from University of Twente (opens in new tab), Loughborough University (opens in new tab), and University of Kent (opens in new tab).