The course introduces fundamental topics in History of Cryptography and Language Decipherment. It would consist of a basic introduction to classical Cryptography, from the origins (Antiquity, in the West and in the East) to the Second World War, aimed essentially at providing the students a general and accurate overview about Cryptography as a science and cultural phenomenon, dealing with the history of this discipline and encryption and decryption methods developed over time by Cryptographers.
The teaching activity will be also substantiated by the application of general principles of combinatorial analysis and encryption techniques. Moreover, the course would have a focus on deciphering techniques applied not only to cryptographic systems, but also to ancient undeciphered languages and writing systems.
A particular attention will be given to the study of the History of Cryptography and of the developments of this discipline, in the West and in the East, over time. The course will introduce, therefore, the study of Cryptography in a historical and theoretical way, analyzing the general and original principles of this science, but also dealing with the direct application of those principles (with the support of practical models useful to directly experiment encryption and deciphering techniques).
The topic will be approached in a very general and all-embracing way, starting from the basic principles and from the origins of Cryptography and broadening the analysis to the contribution of Cryptography to the scientific progress of communications, security systems, and computer sciences.
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Year Taken: AY 19/20, Sem 1
Class Participation and Attendance 10%
Group Project 5%
Mid-Term Quiz 25%
End-Term Quiz 30%
Essay 30%This was my first semester with Dr. Francesco. The first half of the course was about crytography and cryptograms, along with their inventors. The second half of the course was about cryptolinguistics, such as the Sumerians’ cuneiform writing system. I enjoyed this course a lot as I love studying history. Dr. Francesco’s teaching style is storytelling, and I had to stay very alert to catch as much details as I could. I noticed that a lot of my peers were doing tutorials for other classes, which was pretty distracting.
The group project was very light and could be finished in a week or two. Rather than focusing on the cryptograms, I noticed that Dr. Francesco was more interested about the inventors behind the cryptograms, so you might want to focus on these for your group presentation.
The two quizzes were very easy, and everybody did well. The main differentiating factor was the essay. We had to create our own cryptogram and write about it. I analysed and predicted what everybody else would write, and I added additional features to make my paper stand out. I also wrote in first-person style as I had a feeling that Dr. Francesco prefer personalised essays. My gamble turned out to be right.
This review was reposted with the kind permission of aLMSstudent. Originally published at https://ntulmsmods.wordpress.com/2020/05/22/ntu-lms-year-3-sem-1/
June 28, 2021
