HashThat!

Leon Batista Alberti

Leon Batista Alberti, a polymath is his own right, was credited with the title - "The Father of Western Cryptology". He was a patron of Latin literature, philosophy and painting and assumed multiple avatars from a writer to a theorist to a cryptographer. He is known best for his work in the field of architecture: blueprinting the plans to transform the famous church of Rimini, the Tempio Malatestiano (1450), and the facade of Santa Maria Novella (1470) (which is considered to be one of his best works for his effortless blending of the existing parts with the newly created ones); in addition to the renaissance palace, Palazzo Rucellai.

He had to struggle through his childhood as his family had been banned from their hometown till 1428 by the republican government, and he lost his mother to Plague, but through his fierce determination, he published a book called 'On the Advantages and Disadvantages of Letters' when he was just in his twenties to support them upon the death of his father. Among other works, a treatise on traction and on measuring elevations, "Philodoxeos" (a Latin comedy play) and "Libri della Vita Civile" hold prominence. "Descriptio Urbis Romae", his theoretical analysis of reconstructing Rome, was written by him in 1434, two years after he set foot on Roman ground as an "apostolic abbreviator". His literary documentations in the field of architecture which were considered milestones were De Pictura (1435), in which he emphasizes the fact that painting is the foundation for architecture, and De Re Aedificatoria (1450), which is his theoretical creation. In 1448 he was made rector of the parish of San Lorenzo in Mugello.

Coming to his contributions to the field of cryptography, he is primarily known for the invention of the cipher disc and cryptographic key. It was the only cipher to be based on polyalphabetic substitution till the 16th century. He is known to have introduced the world to the concept of enciphering text using numerous cipher alphabets to represent a single symbol, and to have demonstrated the application of frequency analysis as a part of cryptanalysis. He devised a cipher, the Alberti cipher in order to throw some light on each of the above processes, which weren't broken till the 1800s. Alberti's written thesis in cryptography titled 'De componendis cifris', was published in Italian. The life of this legend came to an end in Rome in 1472.

Down The Ages

• Down The Ages Home
• A Hazy Beginning
• The Political Force
  • Key Event: The Babington Plot
  • Key Event: Crypto in Latin America
  • Tools and Devices
  • People
    • Charles Babbage
    • Leon Batista Alberti
    • Blaise de Vigenère
    • Friedrich Kasiski
• The Wars