Photo of Radia Joy Perlman

Radia Joy Perlman

1951 - Present
Computer Science; Network Engineering
USA USA

Personal Information

Born: 1951

Country of Birth: USA

Nationality: USA

Ethnicity: White

Education

MIT BS 1973 MS 1976 both in Mathematics PhD 1988 Computer Science

Professional Life

Field of Study: Computer Science; Network Engineering

Institution/Corporation: Digital Equipment Company; Intel; Sun Microsystems (now Oracle); Bolt Berenek Newman (BBN); Harvard University; University of Washington; EMC Corp

Degrees & Memberships: Honorary Degree: Royal Institute of Technology (2000) KTH; Member: National Academy of Engineering (2015) Fellow Association for Computing Machinery (2016) Fellow IEEE (2012) Intel Fellow (2010)

Awards & Achievements

Awards: 2010 SIGCOMM Award for Lifetime Contribution; 2006 Lifetime Achievement Usenix; 2016 National Inventors Hall of Fame; 2014 Internet Hall of Fame; 2005 Anita Borg Institute Women of Vision Award; 2003 Inventor of the Year Silicon Valley Intellectual Property Law Association; 1992 & 1997 named 1 of 20 Most Influential People in the Industry Data Communications magazine

Achievements: Robust Network Routing and Bridging; pioneer in teaching children how to program using LOGO; known as the Mother of the Internet a label she does not like

Known as "The Mother of the Internet" for inventing the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) in 1985; hated the nickname

Started the field of tangible user interface

Holds 153 patents

Her innovations have made a huge impact on how networks self-organize & move data

Inventor of TRILL protocol to correct some of the shortcomings of STP

A pioneer in teaching young children (as young as 3.5) to program