I attended the panel today when this was announced, and regarding the omission of Ralph Merkle, both recipients explicitly acknowledged him by name. Diffie specifically said that they built upon his prior work.
It also occurred to me that Moxie Marlinspike was in the unusual position of being the only one on the panel of five not to have (yet!) received a Turing Award. (He came off very well nonetheless.)
(In addition to Diffie and Hellman, the other two Turing-awarded panelists were Ron Rivest and Adi Shamir.)
I'm a big fan of Moxie's work, but would you mind elaborating on for which work he'd receive a Turing award? I'm not familiar with their eligibility standards. Thanks!
It's like the Nobel Prize of computer science. It's generally given to academics rather than practitioners, for deep theoretical contributions. But not always.
In any case, I didn't mean to imply that Moxie should receive a Turing Award. I just thought it was remarkable that 80% of the panel was Turing Award winners -- but only officially as of the beginning of the panel!
It also occurred to me that Moxie Marlinspike was in the unusual position of being the only one on the panel of five not to have (yet!) received a Turing Award. (He came off very well nonetheless.)
(In addition to Diffie and Hellman, the other two Turing-awarded panelists were Ron Rivest and Adi Shamir.)