This week IBSS continues its focus on computer science and the contributions of a few important women in its history.
Elizabeth “Jake” Feinler originally set out to work as a biochemist, however while working towards her Ph.D she worked on a project that sparked her interest in large data compilations. No longer interested in biochemistry, she moved to California where she worked at the Stanford Research Institute in the Information Research Department.
She worked there for 12 years before becoming a member of Dr. Douglas Engelbart’s Augmentation Research Center in 1972 where she worked on the internet. By 1974, she was promoted to principal investigator for the Network Information Center (NIC) project for the ARPNET.
Feinler and her group worked on what would be the first “white” and “yellow” pages and the first query based network home name and address (WHOIS) as well as managing the Host Naming Registry for the internet from 1972-79. Their work resulted in the popular domain naming scheme of .com, .edu, .gov, .org etc we all use today. They also developed the foundation for today’s email systems.
In 1989, she left the research center to work at the NASA Ames Research Center as a contractor for Sterling Software Corp. She worked in actively setting up NASA Science Internet, Globe NICs and development and management guidelines for the NASA World Wide Web. She continued working at NASA until she retired in 1996.
During her retirement, she volunteered at the Computer History Museum where she helped to organize a collection of over 350 boxes of archives of internet papers that she donated. She is currently enjoying retirement in Wheeling, West Virginia.
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