Evi Nemeth (born June 7, 1940 – missing-at-sea June or July 2013) was an engineer, author, and teacher known for her expertise in computer
system administration
An IT administrator, system administrator, sysadmin, or admin is a person who is responsible for the upkeep, configuration, and reliable operation of computer systems, especially multi-user computers, such as servers. The system administr ...
and networks. She was the lead author of the "bibles" of system administration: ''UNIX System Administration Handbook'' (1989, 1995, 2000), ''Linux Administration Handbook'' (2002, 2006), and ''UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook'' (2010, 2017). Evi Nemeth was known in technology circles as the matriarch of system administration.
Nemeth was best known in mathematical circles for originally identifying inadequacies in the "
Diffie–Hellman problem", the basis for a large portion of modern network
cryptography
Cryptography, or cryptology (from "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logy, -logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of Adversary (cryptography), ...
.
Career
Nemeth received her bachelor's degree in mathematics from
Penn State #Redirect Pennsylvania State University
The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with ca ...
in 1961 and her
PhD
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...
in mathematics from the
University of Waterloo, Ontario in 1971. She taught at
Florida Atlantic University
Florida Atlantic University (Florida Atlantic or FAU) is a Public university, public research university with its main campus in Boca Raton, Florida, United States. The university is a member of the State University System of Florida and has s ...
and the
State University of New York
The State University of New York (SUNY ) is a system of Public education, public colleges and universities in the New York (state), State of New York. It is one of the List of largest universities and university networks by enrollment, larges ...
at Utica (SUNY Tech) before joining the computer science department at the
University of Colorado Boulder
The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder, CU, or Colorado) is a public research university in Boulder, Colorado, United States. Founded in 1876, five months before Colorado became a state, it is the flagship university of the University o ...
(CU-Boulder) in 1980. She served as manager of the college's computing facility from 1982 to 1986. She also was a visiting Associate Professor at
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College ( ) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, Dartmouth is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the America ...
in 1990, and at UC San Diego in 1998, while on
sabbatical
A sabbatical (from the Hebrew: (i.e., Sabbath); in Latin ; Greek: ) is a rest or break from work; "an extended period of time intentionally spent on something that’s not your routine job."
The concept of the sabbatical is based on the Bi ...
from CU-Boulder.
While at CU-Boulder, Nemeth was well known for her undergraduate systems administration activity, in which students over the years had the opportunity to develop in-depth knowledge and skills in
Unix
Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...
system administration. Together with
Steve Wozniak
Stephen Gary Wozniak (; born August 11, 1950), also known by his nickname Woz, is an American technology entrepreneur, electrical engineer, computer programmer, philanthropist, and inventor. In 1976, he co-founded Apple Inc., Apple Computer with ...
, Nemeth established the Woz scholarship program at CU-Boulder which funded inquisitive undergraduates for many years. Nemeth also had a special talent for inspiring and teaching young people. She mentored numerous middle- and high-school students, who worked with her to support computing in the college and came to be known as "the munchkins". She also mentored talented young undergraduates, taking them to national meetings where they installed networks and broadcast the meetings' sessions on the Internet on the multicast backbone. She coached the university's student programming teams in the
ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest.
From 1998 to 2006, Nemeth worked with
Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA) at the University of California, San Diego, on various Internet measurement and visualization projects.
Outside the United States, Nemeth helped bring Internet technology to the developing world through her involvement with programs of the Internet Society and the United Nations Development Programme.
A network guru T-shirt
from the 1980s shows
OSI Model
The Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model is a reference model developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) that "provides a common basis for the coordination of standards development for the purpose of systems inter ...
layers with additional
Layer 8
Layer 8 is a term used to refer to ''user'' or ''political'' layer on top of the 7-layer OSI model of computer networking.
The OSI model is a 7-layer abstract model that describes an architecture of data communications for networked computers. Th ...
as the "financial" layer, and Layer 9 as the "political" layer. The design was credited to Evi Nemeth.
During the Summer 1994 USENIX conference in Boston, a commemorative deck of playing cards was created celebrating the 25th anniversary of UNIX. Evi Nemeth coordinated the production of the card deck.
Later life
After her retirement, Nemeth sailed her 40-foot sailboat ''Wonderland'' around various parts of the world, including a circuit of the Atlantic; the Panama Canal; and across the Pacific to New Zealand.
Disappearance at sea
In late May 2013 she, along with six other people aboard the vintage yacht ''Niña'', traveled across the
Tasman Sea
The Tasman Sea is a marginal sea of the South Pacific Ocean, situated between Australia and New Zealand. It measures about across and about from north to south. The sea was named after the Dutch explorer Abel Janszoon Tasman, who in 1642 wa ...
en route to Australia from New Zealand. On June 4, the day the last message, sent by Nemeth, was received from ''Niña'', the Tasman Sea had 65 mile-per-hour winds and swell height reaching 26 feet. A natural disaster (e.g., a
rogue wave A rogue wave is an abnormally large ocean wave.
Rogue wave may also refer to:
* Optical rogue waves, are rare pulses of light analogous to rogue or freak ocean waves.
* Rogue Wave Software, a software company
* Rogue Wave (band), an American in ...
) might have led to the disappearance of the boat. On July 5 New Zealand authorities officially ended the search for the ''Niña'', though relatives of the crew of ''Niña'' have continued to search.
Selected publications
* Nemeth, E., Hein, T., Snyder, G., and Whaley, B., ''Unix and Linux System Administration Handbook'', 4th edition, Prentice Hall, 2010.
* Nemeth, E., Snyder, G., Hein, T., Whaley, B., and Makin, D., ''Unix and Linux System Administration Handbook'', 5th edition, Prentice Hall, 2017.
*
*
* Mullin, R., Nemeth, E. and Weidenhofer, N., "Will Public Key Crypto Systems Live up to Their Expectations? HEP Implementation of the Discrete Log Codebreaker", Proc. of the 1984 Intl Conf on Parallel Processing, Aug. 21–24, 1984, pp. 193–196. Selected for the best paper award for this conference.
*
Awards
*1984 - Best Paper Award, International Parallel Processing Conference, Chicago, August 1984
*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
See also
*
List of people who disappeared mysteriously at sea
Nile Kinnick
Throughout history, people have mysteriously disappeared at sea. The following is a list of known individuals who have mysteriously vanished in open waters, and whose whereabouts remain unknown. In most ocean deaths, bodies are never r ...
*
Layer 8
Layer 8 is a term used to refer to ''user'' or ''political'' layer on top of the 7-layer OSI model of computer networking.
The OSI model is a 7-layer abstract model that describes an architecture of data communications for networked computers. Th ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nemeth, Evi
1940 births
20th-century American women academics
American computer scientists
American women computer scientists
American people of Hungarian descent
Missing American people
People lost at sea
20th-century American women scientists
2010s missing person cases
20th-century American scientists
Eberly College of Science alumni
University of Waterloo alumni
University of Colorado Boulder faculty