Radia Perlman
Radia Perlman is a pioneering software engineer and inventor, often called the “mother of the internet” for her groundbreaking work on networking protocols, most notably the spanning tree protocol (STP), which enables loop-free operation in Ethernet networks and became fundamental to modern LANs.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from MIT and later completed her master’s and PhD there, focusing on network protocols. Beyond STP, Perlman also created TRILL (Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links), designed to improve scalability and efficiency in large networks.
She has authored influential textbooks and contributed to research in networking and tangible computing. Perlman’s work has earned her numerous honors, including induction into both the Internet Hall of Fame and the National Inventors Hall of Fame.