University of Georgia
Mathematics Department Colloquium
Andrew Odlyzko
AT&T Bell Labs
April 15, 1999
The Future of Integer Factorization
Integer factorization, long regarded as one of the
basic problems of number theory, has attracted tremendous
attention in the last quarter century because its presumed
difficulty is the cornerstone of many public key cryptosystems.
Yet we do not know much about how hard this problem really is.
This lecture will survey the progress that has been achieved,
and speculate about the future.