Scott Vanstone (1947-2014)

In March 2014, the cryptography community lost a great leader and visionary with the passing of Scott Vanstone.

You can read about some of Scott’s many achievements at the University of Waterloo Combinatorics & Optimization page commemorating Scott or the International Association for Cryptologic Research page remembering his life.

Scott was central to founding the cryptography effort at Waterloo, and in establishing the original quantum computing group at Waterloo within the Centre for Applied Cryptographic Research. He was a strong champion of the formation of the Institute for Quantum Computing, and a major contributor to the design of the QuantumWorks program which supported the quantum computing community at Waterloo and across Canada in its formative years.

He was a collaborator and mentor of the CryptoWorks21 training program, and continued to support CryptoWorks21 and IQC until his unfortunate passing.

Scott was a teacher, mentor and friend to so many of us, and will be dearly missed.