Some of the most widely-used/advanced cryptography products these days - AES and SHA3 - were invented by Belgians. It seems that fact is hardly a coincidence. Since I'm a complete layman, I can make the connection but can't draw the big picture. Why are they so good? Do the Belgians have a tradition leading back centuries or something? Do they have an MIT-like institution in their country? Do the AES guys & SHA3 guys know each other? Or is it that the success of AES inspired the next generation of Belgian cryptographers to achieve SHA3?...
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5$\begingroup$ Nobody has a tradition going back centuries when it comes to modern cryptography. The main ideas and algorithms behind that go back to the seventies (and some military research maybe in the years before that). $\endgroup$– Maarten Bodewes ♦Apr 19, 2022 at 14:17
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1$\begingroup$ One can likewise ask a similar question as to why is that Chinese cryptologists are good at breaking hash functions such as MD5. But at the end of the day, these are just racial prejudice。 $\endgroup$– DannyNiuApr 20, 2022 at 5:42
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$\begingroup$ Also, rudimentary googling by the OP would have answered the second question of the OP. "Do the AES and SHA-3 guys..." $\endgroup$– kodluApr 20, 2022 at 7:11
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AES and SHA3 were invented by Belgians
One of the four authors of Keccak (the basis of SHA-3) seems to be Italian, and another introduces himself as "citizen of planet Earth 1.0".
It seems that fact is hardly a coincidence.
Two data points is too small a sample to draw a firm conclusion there's a causal factor, much less which. And if we want to hypothesize one such factor, we should use Occam's razor and consider the simplest ones.
Do the AES guys & SHA3 guys know each other?
Yes. One of the four authors of Keccak is one of the two authors of the earlier Rijndael (the basis of AES). I think at least 4 or the 5 authors have some link to the Catholic University of Leuven (Louvain in French¹).
Do they have an MIT-like institution in (Belgium)?
That KU Leuven university is renowned, and has long been. In the subfield of cryptography it has a strong COSIC entity. For a partial illustration see this page, or perhaps that search engine. That entity's earlier work includes the study of efficient implementations (fast/small/low power), with ties to two major Smart Card actors in Europe, and efficiency was an important factor in the selection criteria of both AES and SHA-3.
¹ For non-Europeans: a fact about Belgium is it's sharp divide between Flemish(≈Dutch)-speaking and French-speaking (making English the safe choice in many social, academic and business situations). Factoid: KU Leuven and UC Louvain are two separate universities; they appear separately in these stats.
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$\begingroup$ If you're going to devote this amount of time to answering the original question, it might be polite to up vote it. $\endgroup$ Apr 20, 2022 at 4:05
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1$\begingroup$ @Paul: done that, even though my answer debunks some of the question's assertions. I did so because the question contains subquestions that are answerable, and I learned things making that answer. $\endgroup$– fgrieu ♦Apr 20, 2022 at 7:44
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$\begingroup$ I'm not sure the statement "KU Leuven consists of two separate universities" is accurate - from what I understand they split into two different universities, KU Leuven and UC Louvain, so "KU Leuven" only refers to the Flemish university. $\endgroup$– TMMApr 21, 2022 at 12:58
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$\begingroup$ @TMM : I hope it's fixed, thanks for the note. $\endgroup$– fgrieu ♦Apr 21, 2022 at 13:02