The Turing Award, known as the Nobel Prize of computing, has been won by an Israeli for the second time in a row.

Professor Shafi Goldwasser of the Weizmann Institute of Science near Tel Aviv won the 2012 prize along with Prof Silvio Micali of MIT for their work creating the foundations of internet security.

Their 1982 paper pioneered several approaches now fundamental in the field, including randomised encryption and definitions of security.

The $250,000 prize has been awarded by the Association for Computing Machinery since 1966. President Vint Cerf praised the pair, winners of the 2012 prize, for “their innovative approaches to ensuring security in the digital age.

Last year’s prize was awarded to Israeli American Judea Pearl for contributions in the field of artificial intelligence.

Prof Goldwasser is the fifth Israeli to win the prize and the third woman. The award is named after Alan Turing, the British mathematician who was a renowned codebreaker at Bletchley Park in the Second World War.