Diffie & Hellman Suggest Public Key Cryptography

In 1976 cryptologists Bailey Whitfield 'Whit' Diffie  and Martin E. Hellman published "New Directions in Cryptography," IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, IT-22, 6 (1976) 644–654.

This paper suggested public key cryptography and presented the Diffie-Hellman key exchange.

In March 2016 Diffie and Hellman received the A. M.Turing Award, presented by the ACM, for the invention of public key cryptography.