- Date Of Birth: May 15, 1925
- Date Of Death: December 18, 2013
- State: Florida
Dr. Lowell K. (“Jim”) Frazer passed away on December 18 at Sacred Heart Hospital in Santa Rosa Beach, FL. He was 88 years old.
Dr. Frazer was preceded in death by his wife, Carolyn, and one son, Richard Clark Frazer. He is survived by daughter, Brenda Sue Ronnevik of Fergus Falls, MN, and sons, Ronald Keith Frazer of Santa Rosa Beach, FL, John Douglas Frazer of Lititz, PA, Michael Scott Frazer of Lafayette, CA, and Wayne Edwin Copeland of Sarasota, FL, fifteen grandchildren, ten great-grandchildren, and one great-great-granddaughter.
A member of the Santa Rosa Golf Club and the Sandestin Golf Club, he was an active golfer until he was about
According to the National Security Agency website, Dr. Frazer founded modern cryptographic evaluation. As a result of his efforts, all cryptography used for classified applications by the U.S. Department of Defence and Intelligence Community is now subject to rigorous scientific evaluation. He influenced the design of most U.S. cryptographic systems fielded prior to 1990. In addition, Dr. Frazer was a prolific writer of technical papers.
His college career at Indiana University was interrupted by the world war where he served in air-sea rescue in the Army Air Corps; he received his Ph.D. in 1951. Shortly after, Dr. Frazer went to work for what is now NSA.
He was selected as the first Communications Security (COMSEC) mathematician assigned as an integrated member at GCHQ from 1954 to 1956. During this two-year tour, he performed assessments on many cryptographic systems, designed speech cryptosystems, and discovered an analytic technique that would be widely used over the next three decades. Also, he authored a training primer for new COMSEC cryptomathematicians.
Dr. Frazer was the principal formulator of standards the U.S. and the UK use to judge the strength of cryptographic systems. He continued to lead the adaptation and extension of those standards as the role of cryptography grew from COMSEC to a more diverse mission.
Under his leadership, the industrial TEMPEST program, a novel approach to government-industry interaction, matured. The program integrated TEMPEST concerns into the security evaluation process for U.S. cryptographic equipment.
Dr. Frazer played a major role in developing NSA’s mathematics, cryptanalysis and Information Assurance (IA) communities. He assisted in developing the National Cryptologic School and was associated with the CryptoMath Institute from its inception. He was a member of the Mathematics, Cryptanalysis, and COMSEC Career Panels, and an Advisor to the NSA Technical Journal for approximately 20 years.
Dr.
