In Code; A Mathematical Journey

ix, [1], 341, [1] pages. Illustrations. Occasional footnotes. Mathematical formulae. Bibliography. Index. Sarah Flannery (born 1982, County Cork, Ireland) was, at sixteen years old, the winner of the 1999 Esat Young Scientist Exhibition for development of the Cayley-Purser algorithm, based on work she had done with researchers at Baltimore Technologies during a brief internship there. The project, entitled "Cryptography - A new algorithm versus the RSA", also won her the EU Young Scientist of the Year Award for 1999. Her book In Code, co-written with her father, mathematician David Flannery, retells the story of the making and breaking of the algorithm and of the enjoyment that she got, as a child and throughout her life, from solving mathematical puzzles. She studied computer science at Peterhouse, a college of the University of Cambridge, graduating in 2003, and, as of 2006, worked for Electronic Arts as a software engineer. She now works at TirNua as a "Chief Scientist". She focuses on developing the virtual economy in the game and the back-end web services that power game features. The lights on St. Patrick's Street, one of the main thoroughfares of Flannery's home city of Cork, are named after her. In January 1999, Sarah Flannery, a sports-loving teenager from Blarney in County Cork, Ireland, was awarded Ireland's Young Scientist of the Year for her extraordinary research and discoveries in Internet cryptography. The following day, her story began appearing in Irish papers and soon after was splashed across the front page of the London Times, complete with a photo of Sarah and a caption calling her "brilliant." Just sixteen, she was a mathematician with an international reputation.IN CODE is a heartwarming story that will have readers cheering Sarah on. Originally published in England and co-written with her mathematician father, David Flannery, IN CODE is "a wonderfully moving story about the thrill of the mathematical chase" (Nature) and "a paean to intellectual adventure" (Times Educational Supplement). A memoir in mathematics, it is all about how a girl next door, nurtured by her family, moved from the simple math puzzles that were the staple of dinnertime conversation to prime numbers, the Sieve of Eratosthenes, Fermat's Little Theorem, googols-and finally into her breathtaking algorithm. Parallel with each step is a modest girl's own self-discovery-her values, her burning curiosity, the joy of persistence, and, above all, her love for her family.…