Timothy C. May

For the cricket player, see Tim May

Timothy C. May, better known as Tim May, is a technical and political writer, and was an electronic engineer and senior scientist at Intel in the company's early history. He is retired as of 2003. May is one subject of the book Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp Through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High-tech by Paulina Borsook.

Discovery of alpha particle effects on computer chips

As an engineer, May is most noted for having solved the "alpha particle problem", which was affecting the reliability of integrated circuits as device features reached a critical size where a single alpha particle could change the state of a stored value and cause a single event upset. May realized that the ceramic packaging which Intel was using, made from clay, was very slightly radioactive. Intel solved the issue by adopting plastic packaging for their products.

May co-authored the 1981 Baker Prize-winning paper "Alpha Particle Induced Soft Errors in Dynamic Memories", published in the IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices in January 1979 with Murray H. Woods.

Writings on cryptography and privacy

May was a founding member of and has been one of the most voluminous contributors to the famous Cypherpunks electronic mailing list. He wrote extensively on cryptography and privacy from the 1990s through 2003.

May wrote a substantial cypherpunk-themed FAQ, The Cyphernomicon (incorporating his earlier piece "The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto"), and his essay "True Nyms and Crypto Anarchy" was included in a reprint of Vernor Vinge's novel True Names. In 2001, his work was published in the book Crypto Anarchy, Cyberstates, and Pirate Utopias (ISBN 0-262-62151-7).

References

1. "IEEE W. R. G. Baker Prize Award Recipients"

External links

• The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto Timothy C. May, 1992.
• Cyphernomicon Tim May, 1994. (HTML version)
• Out of Control Chapter 12 - Tim May & E-Money