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James Henry Ellis (September 25, 1924 – November 25, 1997) was an engineer and cryptographer whose pioneering work laid the foundation for modern public-key cryptography (used in passwords). Born in Australia and raised in Britain, Ellis joined the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in 1952, then at Eastcote, where he embarked on several cryptographic projects. In 1970, he proposed a scheme for “non-secret encryption” in a classified GCHQ report titled “The Possibility of Secure Non-Secret Digital Encryption.” This concept, which he developed after reading a World War Two paper from Bell Labs describing Project C43—a method to protect voice communications by adding and later subtracting random noise—was a precursor to the field of public-key cryptography. Ellis’s work remained classified until 1997, preventing it from influencing mainstream cryptographic initiatives like the Diffie–Hellman key exchange and RSA algorithms, which are integral to modern internet security. His contributions, along with those of fellow GCHQ cryptographers Clifford Cocks and Malcolm Williamson, were publicly acknowledged in 1997 and 2016, highlighting GCHQ’s early role in developing public-key cryptography. This is part of the residential development of HMS Pembroke, an outstation of the Bletchley Park codebreaking operation during the Second World War, and the predecessor of what is now GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. Susan Toms Ruislip, in The History Behind the Road Names for Pembroke Park explained that Northwood and Eastcote Historical Society successfully petitioned the developer Taylor/Wimpey to name streets here on the theme of the important codebreaking work that progressed here.
