Flannery, Sarah

As a 16-year old, Sarah Flannery achieved fame when she became the winner of the Esat Young Scientist Exhibit in 1998, the Irish Young Scientist of the Year [Page 577]Award. Based on her internship-related work, which was conducted with researchers at Baltimore Technologies, she also received the European Young Scientist of the Year Award in 1999 for her instrumental work in the development of cryptography's Cayley-Pulser algorithm, named after the 19th-century British mathematician (Cayley), modeled after the mathematician (Pulser) who inspired her during her internship.

Three years later, in 2002, Sarah Flannery cowrote the book In Code: A Mathematical Journey, with her father, David Flannery. The book covers public-key cryptography, her work in developing this particular algorithm, and her interest in solving mathematical puzzles. After having graduated with a B.A. in the field of computer science from the University of Cambridge's Peterhouse College in 2003, Flannery went to work for video game publisher and developer Electronic Arts. According to Biographies of Women Mathematicians, as of 2009, Sarah Flannery was working as a chief scientist at Tirnua, an institution that she helped to establish.

According to Rafe Jones, Sarah Flannery's book In Code: A Mathematical Journey is valuable for shedding insight into the mind of a teenager who achieved acclaim for her work in mathematics. The book also provides an energetic introduction into public-key cryptography, and more precisely, the RSA and the alternate algorithms that Flannery created. Finally, Jones advocates reading Flannery's book because of the sheer joy that it brings with it. Flannery describes her process of discovery: “all of this was an unusual experience for me,” but that she “had a great feeling of excitement. I think it was because I was working on something that no one had worked on before. I worked constantly for whole days on end, and it was exhilarating.” To commemorate Flannery's accomplishments, the lights on St. Patrick's Street, one of the main areas of her home city of Cork, Ireland, are named after her.