A Conversation with Dr. Radia Perlman: The Mother of the Internet
On January 27, 2025, The School of STEM and the School of Business hosted Dr. Radia Perlman, a pioneer in computer networking, for an inspiring discussion as part of the Business of Science lecture series.
Known as the “Mother of the Internet,” Dr. Perlman revolutionized modern networking with innovations like the Spanning Tree Protocol and IS-IS link-state routing, both of which remain essential to internet infrastructure today. With over 100 patents, a National Inventors Hall of Fame induction and numerous lifetime achievement awards, Dr. Perlman has left an undeniable mark on computer science.
During their conversation, Dr. Perlman shared powerful insights into her groundbreaking contributions to computer science and engineering, the challenges she overcame as a woman in tech and timeless design principles that continue to shape the digital world.
If you missed this thought-provoking discussion — or want to revisit Dr. Perlman’s invaluable insights — you can watch the full conversation on our YouTube channel.
About Radia Perlman
Radia Perlman is a Fellow at Dell Technologies. She has made many contributions to the fields of network routing and security protocols. Her IS-IS link state routing protocol design continues to be widely deployed today, and the principles have been incorporated into other routing protocols (such as OSPF). Her spanning tree bridging design transformed Ethernet from a single shared link to a network that can support many. Her contributions to network security include designing systems resilient to malicious. She wrote the textbook “Interconnections: Bridges, Routers, Switches, and Internetworking Protocols”, and cowrote the textbook “Network Security: Private Communication in a Public World.” The 3rd edition of Network Security was recently published, and includes significant content about quantum computing and quantum-safe public key algorithms. She has received numerous awards including induction into the Inventor Hall of Fame, induction into the Internet Hall of Fame, lifetime achievement awards from ACM’s SIGCOMM and Usenix, election to National Academy of Engineering, election into the Washington State Academy of Science, and an honorary doctorate from KTH. She has taught courses at various universities including University of Washington, Texas A&M, MIT, and Harvard. She has a Ph.D. in computer science from MIT.
Interview questions
- 4:41 – Can you share a bit about your love of mathematics?
- 11:31 – At one point you decided you were going to leave graduate school and then you came back. Can you tell us a little more about why you came back? What motivated that?
- 25:27 – You’ve made incredible accomplishments throughout your life and career. What do you think causes you to be good at what you do?
- 31:53 – As a fellow woman in STEM, I’m curious how it’s been for you throughout your career and industry experiences where you’ve found yourself surrounded mostly by men.
- 39:03 – Do you have any advice for the students in the audience?
- 45:22 – Open Q&A