2 Minutes with Turing Award Winner Whitfield Diffie

Oxford Mathematician Dr Tom Crawford sits down with Whitfield Diffie (2015 Turing Award) to ask 3 questions requested by viewers.

1. What was the first piece of code you remember writing?
2. What is your favourite number?
3. Tabs or spaces?

Interview with Whitfield Diffie recorded at the 2021 Heidelberg Laureate Forum.

With thanks to
Whitfield Diffie
Heidelberg Laureate Forum
Heidelberg Laureate Forum Foundation
Pablo Costa

[selo]

Hey Tom, I am a 15 yr old who, some time ago, hated mathematics, I‘ve been watching some of your videos and I must say, you’re one of the people who have helped me to see the beauty of mathematics and thereby also see the beauty of our mesmerizing world. I dearly thank you for that.

P.S.: Could you do an explanation video on Eulers Identity sometime? Would be amazing. Thanks.

[johnchessant]

the Diffie of Diffie-Hellman! so amazing you got to interview an immortal (his name will always be attached to the discovery of public-key cryptography)

[anssi]

Well done Tom. I would have ended the interview too after he said spaces.

[masterlight]

The main takeover of this interview :
spaces are better than tabs
emacs is better than vim

[busterdafydd]

tab isn't about compression. that tab key should be mapped to tab by default, but instead IDE's map it to spaces, in which case if you truly use spaces, enjoy pressing space 4x as much as tabs

[dac]

Not that money is any means of success but he is doing well with over $15 million

[swagatochatterjee]

I lost all sanity when he said emacs and spaces!