Merkle

Merkle and Merckle are surnames of German origin. It used as a minimization of Old German given names such as Markwart (meaning "guard of the frontier") or Markhard (meaning "strong frontier"). They may refer to:

Cryptography and computing

 * Merkle–Damgård construction, a method of building collision-resistant cryptographic hash functions
 * Merkle–Hellman knapsack cryptosystem, an early public key cryptosystem
 * Merkle's Puzzles, an early construction for a public-key cryptosystem
 * Merkle tree, a computer hash tree

Business

 * Adolphe Merkle (1924–2012), Swiss Entrepreneur and patron of the sciences
 * Adolf Merckle (1934–2009), German entrepreneur
 * Edgar A. Merkle (1900–1984), American founder of Merkle Press in Washington, D.C. and Merkle Wildlife Sanctuary and Visitor's Center on the Patuxent River in Maryland
 * (1913–2000), German industrial manager and 1996 winner of the Adenauer-de Gaulle Prize
 * Ludwig Merckle (born 1965), German businessman
 * Philipp Daniel Merckle (born 1966), German entrepreneur

Religion

 * Benjamin L. Merkle, professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, North Carolina
 * Benjamin R. Merkle, president of New Saint Andrews College, Idaho

Sport

 * Andreas Merkle (born 1962), former German footballer
 * Ed Merkle (1917–87), American football player
 * Fred Merkle (1888–1956), American baseball player
 * (1918–1993), German football trainer and coach of 1. FC Köln

Other people

 * Judith Merkle Riley (1942–2010), American writer, teacher and academic
 * Marcel-André Casasola Merkle (born 1977), German game designer
 * Ralph Merkle (born 1952), American cryptographer

Other uses

 * Merkle Wildlife Sanctuary and Visitor's Center, Maryland, United States
 * Merkle's Boner, a baserunning mistake in baseball