This is an interesting angle on essentially the same problem. Can a set of theorems about the prime numbers lead another group of people to the RSA encryption,

This is an interesting angle on essentially the same problem. Can a set of theorems about the prime numbers lead another group of people to the RSA encryption, for example? Considering that Clifford Cocks invented a similar system 4 years before Rivest, Shamir and Adleman (and even before Diffie and Hellman published their cryptosystem), the answer seems to be "yes". On the other hand, that 4 year difference means that people have to be ready for the idea, i.e., work on their "problem sets".