Radia Perlman
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dr. Radia Joy Perlman (born 1952 in Portsmouth, Virginia) is a software designer and network engineer sometimes referred to as the 'Mother of the Internet'. She is most famous for her invention of the spanning-tree protocol, while working for Digital Equipment Corporation, which is fundamental to the operation of network bridges. She also made large contributions to many other areas of network design and standardization such as link-state protocols. She obtained a Bachelor's, Master's in Mathematics, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from MIT. Her doctoral thesis at MIT addressed the issue of routing in the presence of malicious network failures and forms the basis for most of the work in this field.
Perlman is the author of two textbooks on networking. She is currently employed by Sun Microsystems. She holds more than 47 patents from Sun alone.
[edit] Awards
- USENIX Lifetime Achievement Award (2007)
- One of three recipients of the inaugural Woman of Vision Award from the Anita Borg Institute (2005); Radia's award was for Innovation.
- SVIPLA (Silicon Valley Inventor of the year) - (April 28, 2004)
- Honorary Doctorate, Royal Institute of Technology - (June 28, 2000)
- Again, named as one of the 20 most influential people in the industry in the 25th anniversary issue of Data Communications magazine. (Only person to be named in both issues.) - (January 15, 1997)
- Named as one of the 20 most influential people in the industry in the 20th anniversary issue of Data Communications magazine. - (January 15, 1992)
