In January 1999, Sarah Flannery, a sports-loving teenager from Blarney in County Cork, won Ireland's Young Scientist of the Year award for her extraordinary research and discoveries in Internet cryptography. Soon her story and photograph were splashed across the front page of the London Times, where she was called "brilliant." Her discoveries earned her the title European Young Scientist of the Year. Just sixteen, she was suddenly a mathematician with an international reputation. Here is the story of how a girl next door moved from the simple math puzzles that were the staple of her family's 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. It's a heartwarming story that will have readers cheering Sarah on.
