The Amazing Code-Breaking Intern

The intern does many things: fetches coffee, rearranges files, and is basically on-call for any number of sometimes humiliating, always mind-numbing tasks that the higher-ups don’t feel like doing. The intern does not make groundbreaking discoveries. Until now.

BusinessWeek reports that Craig Gentry, an intern at IBM recently came up with a way to "run calculations on encrypted data without actually decrypting it," something that had eluded mathematicians up until now. The practical applications of this discovery mean that people can share data without revealing sensitive information, boosting online privacy.

To be fair, Gentry isn’t your typical intern. He’s 35, a Stanford PhD candidate and already had a stint as a lawyer after graduating from Harvard Law. But that’s what makes Gentry so interesting. After feeling unfulfilled as a lawyer, he felt the draw of math (his college major) pulling him back. Instead of just doodling symbols and graphs in his spare time, Gentry did something about it. He left the law firm, went back to school and started from the beginning, as an intern.

So what does he get now that he’s made this discovery? A glowing letter of recommendation? His own computer? Even better: he gets a job.

Photo courtesy Andrew Currie via Flickr.