James Massey

James Lee Massey (February 11, 1934 – June 16, 2013)[1] was an American information theorist and cryptographer, Professor Emeritus of Digital Technology at ETH Zurich.

His notable work includes the application of the Berlekamp–Massey algorithm to linear codes, the design of the block ciphers IDEA (with Xuejia Lai, based on the Lai-Massey scheme) and SAFER, and the Massey-Omura cryptosystem (with Jim K. Omura).

As a child, after the death of his father in Ohio, he moved with his mother and brother to Mendota, Illinois.

After three years of military service, he began graduate studies in 1959 at MIT, where he concentrated on coding theory and was awarded a Ph.D. in 1962, with John Wozencraft as his advisor.

He returned to Notre Dame, where he taught electrical engineering until 1977, publishing significant research in convolutional codes, frame synchronization techniques and feedback-assisted communication.