Radia Perlman is a computer programmer and network engineer. She is a major figure in assembling the networks and technology to enable what we now know as the Internet. She is most famous for her invention of the spanning-tree protocol (STP), which is fundamental to the operation of network bridges, while working for Digital Equipment Corporation, thus earning her nickname "Mother of the Internet".
Radia's innovations have made a huge impact on how networks self-organise and move data. She also made large contributions to many other areas of network design and standardisation: for example, enabling today's link-state routing protocols, to be more robust, scalable, and easy to manage.