Random numbers are a precious commodity, whether expressed as strings of decimal digits or simply 1s and 0s. Computer scientist George Marsaglia of Florida State University, however, likes giving them away.
Marsaglia has spent most of his career producing and testing random numbers. He published his first paper on the topic more than 40 years ago. Since then, Marsaglia and his collaborators have identified a variety of flaws in computer-based random number generators, invented more robust versions of existing generators, and developed a suite of rigorous tests to check for randomness.