The words “spy movie” and “Robert Redford” usually make one think of the 1975 classic “Three Days of the Condor,” but that’s not the only film fitting this description. In 1992, Redford starred alongside Dan Aykroyd, Ben Kingsley, Mary McDonnell, River Phoenix, Sidney Poitier and David Strathairn in “Sneakers,” a spy caper about a group of hackers, techies and espionage experts who are tasked by the government to steal a code-breaking device, only to get tangled up in the investigation of a mathematician’s murder. For a lighthearted drama, the producers of “Sneakers” took the math aspects seriously and hired Leonard Adleman as a mathematical consultant. At the time, Adleman was mainly known for being the person who coined the term “virus.” However, he is now viewed as the father of DNA computing and was the winner of the 2002 Turing Award for his co-creation of the RSA encryption algorithm, which is now widely used in secure data transmissions.
