Evi Nemeth facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Evi Nemeth
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| Born | June 7, 1940 |
| Disappeared | June 4, 2013 (aged 72) Tasman Sea |
| Status | Missing for 12 years, 1 month and 24 days |
| Occupation | Author, retired professor |
| Known for | Lead author of "bibles" of system administration |
Evi Nemeth (born June 7, 1940) was a brilliant engineer, author, and teacher. She was famous for her deep knowledge of computer systems and networks. She wrote very important books about managing computer systems. These books were so helpful that people called them the "bibles" of system administration. Evi Nemeth was known as a leading figure in the world of technology.
She was also recognized for finding problems in something called the "Diffie–Hellman problem". This is a key part of how modern internet security, like cryptography, works.
Contents
Evi Nemeth's Amazing Career
Evi Nemeth earned her first degree in math from Penn State in 1961. She then got her PhD in math from the University of Waterloo in 1971. She taught at a few universities before joining the computer science department at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU-Boulder) in 1980. From 1982 to 1986, she managed the college's computer facility.
She also taught as a visiting professor at Dartmouth College and UC San Diego.
Teaching and Mentoring Young Techies
At CU-Boulder, Nemeth was well-known for her special way of teaching students about Unix system administration. She helped students gain deep knowledge and skills. She even teamed up with Steve Wozniak, who co-founded Apple. Together, they created a scholarship program at CU-Boulder. This program helped many curious undergraduate students.
Evi Nemeth had a special talent for inspiring young people. She guided many middle and high school students. These students worked with her to support computing at the college. They were affectionately known as "the munchkins." She also mentored talented young college students. She would take them to big national meetings. There, they would set up networks and broadcast the meeting sessions online. She also coached the university's student programming teams. They competed in the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest.
Helping the Internet Grow Worldwide
From 1998 to 2006, Nemeth worked with CAIDA. This group at the University of California, San Diego, studied how the Internet works. They also worked on projects to show Internet data visually.
Outside the United States, Nemeth helped bring Internet technology to developing countries. She did this through her work with the Internet Society and the United Nations Development Programme.
A famous T-shirt from the 1980s shows the OSI model layers. This model explains how computers talk to each other. The T-shirt added two new layers: "Layer 8" for money and "Layer 9" for politics. This clever design was credited to Evi Nemeth.
Later Life and Disappearance
After she retired, Evi Nemeth loved to sail her 40-foot sailboat named Wonderland. She sailed it all over the world. This included trips around the Atlantic Ocean, through the Panama Canal, and across the Pacific Ocean to New Zealand.
In 2013, she was sailing with other crew members on an old yacht called Niña. They were traveling across the Tasman Sea from New Zealand to Australia. The Tasman Sea is known for rough weather. During their trip, there were very strong winds, up to 65 miles per hour. The waves were also huge, reaching 26 feet high.
The Niña and its crew were last heard from on June 4, 2013. It is thought that a natural disaster might have caused the boat to disappear. On July 5, 2013, authorities in New Zealand officially stopped searching for the Niña. However, the families of the crew members have continued to search for them.
Awards and Honors
Evi Nemeth received many awards for her important work:
- 1984—Best Paper Award, International Parallel Processing Conference
- 1995—USENIX/LISA Lifetime Achievement Award
- 1999—Top 25 Women on the Web Award
- 2007—Distinguished Engineering Honoree at CU-Boulder
- 5th Annual Telluride Tech Fest Honoree
- 2018—NCWIT Pioneer in Tech Award
Evi Nemeth's Thoughts
"Early ethernet developers... objected to a roundoff error that exceeded the ARPANET's entire bandwidth, but marketing won out."
"Many people think the word ‘daemon’ means ‘demon’, like something evil. This is a big misunderstanding. ‘Daemon’ is actually an older word. Daemons don't have to be good or evil. They help define a person's character. The ancient Greeks thought of a ‘personal daemon’ like a ‘guardian angel’. So, ‘eudaemonia’ means being helped by a kind spirit. It seems Unix systems have both daemons and demons!" (p. 403, USAH)
