| Radia Perlman | |
|---|---|
| Born | Portsmouth, Virginia |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Fields | Computer Science |
| Institutions | Intel |
| Alma mater | MIT |
| Known for | Network and security protocols; computer books |
Radia Joy Perlman (born 1951 in Portsmouth, Virginia, USA) is a software designer and network engineer sometimes referred to as the "Mother of the Internet."[1] She is most famous for her invention of the spanning-tree protocol (STP), which is fundamental to the operation of network bridges, while working for Digital Equipment Corporation. She also made large contributions to many other areas of network design and standardization, such as link-state protocols, including TRILL, which she invented to correct some of the shortcomings of spanning-trees. She obtained a Bachelor's, Master's in Mathematics, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from MIT.[2] Her doctoral thesis at MIT[3] addressed the issue of routing in the presence of malicious network failures.
Perlman is the author of one textbook on networking and coauthor of one textbook on network security. She is currently employed by Intel. She holds more than fifty patents from Sun alone.[4]
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As an undergraduate at MIT she undertook a UROP (Undergraduate Research Opportunity), in lieu of course units, within the LOGO Lab at the (then) MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Working under the supervision of Seymour Papert, she developed a "tiny" version of the educational robotics language LOGO, called TORTIS. During research performed in 1974-6, young children—the youngest aged 3½ years, programmed a LOGO educational robot called a Turtle. Radia has been described as a pioneer of teaching young children computer programming.[5]