“I went to MIT at a time when the number of females was strictly limited by the number that could fit into the single female dorm, so there were very few women (I think 50 out of a class of 1000),” Dr. Perlman adapted the educational programming language developed by her supervisor into a language called Toddler’s Own Recursive Turtle Interpreter System, or TORTIS for short, which was aimed at children to help them learn programming 3. Perlman was hired as a part-time programmer at her alma mater’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory 1. Perlman attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where she earned a BS and an MS degree in Mathematics in 19 respectively 1. “I never took things apart or built a computer out of spare parts” 2.Īfter excelling in primary and secondary school, Dr. Perlman in an interview with The Atlantic. However, I did not fit the stereotype of the “engineer,” said Dr. I always liked logic puzzles and I found math and science classes in school effortless and fascinating. Perlman was a gifted student in math and science 1. Born on Decemin Portsmouth, Virginia to her father, an engineer, and her mother, a mathematician and computer programmer, Dr. Radia Perlman’s introduction to programming came early. Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence and Data Scienceĭr.She reminds young people who don’t fit engineering stereotypes how valuable their creative perspectives are in this field.Ĭheck out the Leahy Center’s blog to learn about more influential leaders in technology. As a pianist, she translates her own unique understanding of music and arts into her work with technology and network security.
In an interview with Dell, she explains that the gender gap in technology is largely due to people not realizing that “there are plenty of opportunities to be artistic, help people and communicate with heart.” She also believes many “people think they would not be good at it because they don’t fit the stereotype of an engineer, namely someone that took things apart from a very young age.” More importantly, Perlman uses her success to encourage young women to participate in STEM. (such as DEC, Sun Microsystems IncDell, Intel) and gained hundreds of patents for her innovations.īeneath all of her work is a lightheartedness and humor- a refreshing point of view that has made her two textbooks, Interconnections and Network Security, popular classroom resources. She’s worked for some of the largest technology and computer companies in the U.S. She was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in 2014, the National Academy of Engineering in 2015, and the National Inventors Hall of Fame in ( 2016). In 2004, she was named Inventor of the Year by the Silicon Valley Intellectual Property Law Association. Perlman has received many honors in her field.
Since then, her status as the “Mother of the Internet” has been solidified through her contributions to public key infrastructure, data expiration, and distributed algorithms. TRILL, a successor of STP, allows Ethernet to make more optimal use of bandwidth. In 2004, Perlman introduced TRILL (TRansparent Interconnection of Lots of Links).
Perlman, a lover of literature and art, (in)famously wrote a poem for her boss describing the functions of STP. The result of her efforts was the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) which transformed Ethernet technology by preventing network loops and redundancy in order to improve fault tolerance. Without it, network loops would cause slow, irregular internet connection or network failure. Her work centered on the creation of a distributed algorithm that could allow networks to self-organize in a scalable and robust way. Perlman’s career began in the 1980s at DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) when network infrastructure and security were just getting started. She attributes her success to the fact that she doesn’t fit the “tinkering engineer” stereotype- instead, she focuses on simplifying the complicated and letting the machines do the work themselves. It’s this exact attitude that helped her cultivate her personal philosophy: that people shouldn’t have to understand technology in order to use it. Rather than a first-adopter of new gadgets, she’d consider herself a last-adopter, someone left kicking and screaming when given a new interface. Radia Perlman wasn’t always a fan of technology.
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