Radia Perlman

By Mark Steer

Radia Perlman
(1952 - )

In the mid-1970s computer scientists had run up against a tricky problem that they just couldn’t get their heads around: how do you create routes between different computers along which information can travel?

At one particular meeting the worthy men of the technology field sat through a thirty minute presentation by a woman who claimed to have the solution. It was sweet that she was trying, but really, what could a woman know about these things? Her theories were dismissed.

As it transpired, she could know quite a lot. Even if those bozos couldn’t see it, Radia Perlman knew she had solved the information routing problem with her spanning tree algorithm.

The algorithm acts as a road map for moving information along the roads of the Internet, without it bytes of data would simply wander aimlessly about, not knowing where they were supposed to be going and generally not being of any use to anyone. You don’t notice it when you’re using the Internet, but the spanning tree algorithm is always there, making sure that the information you want gets to your computer quickly and easily.

As you might have guessed by now, Perlman eventually managed to bang her message home and with it made the Internet a viable proposition. And there’s not much chance of her being ignored again – she is currently a Distinguished Engineer for Sun Microsystems, which is a bit like a techie version of being a professor. Oh, and she’s an actual professor as well. At Harvard.

Since her initial breakthrough Perlman has carried on improving and inventing systems to make the Internet run more effectively and securely as well as writing a number of widely read textbooks and proving herself one of the finest I.T. educators around. Who said computers were only for boys?

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