Cayley–Purser algorithm
The Cayley-Purser algorithm was published in early 1999 by Irishwoman Sarah Flannery, who was sixteen years old at the time. She named the cryptographic algorithm for mathematician Arthur Cayley and Michael Purser, founder of Baltimore Technologies, a Dublin data security company. Flannery had the idea for the algorithm during an internship with Baltimore Technologies.
The Cayler-Purser algorithm should have been some 22 times faster than the RSA process, because it uses a simpler mathematical function. For her work, Flannery received first prize in an Irish competition for young scientists, even though (or perhaps because) she herself discovered a weakness in her argumentation and published an analysis of the problems.