Kathy Kohner-Zuckerman

Kathy Kohner-Zuckerman, born on 19 January 1941, is an American surfer best known as the real-life inspiration for Gidget, the title character of her father Frederick Kohner's 1957 novel Gidget: The Little Girl with Big Ideas. She grew up in Brentwood and spent much of her childhood on the Malibu beaches, where she started surfing at fifteen alongside influential surfers of the era. The novel became a bestseller and led to a 1959 Columbia Pictures film and later television series. Surfer Magazine named her number seven among the 25 most influential people in surfing, and she was inducted into the Southern California Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 2008 and the Surfing Walk of Fame in Huntington Beach in 2011 as Woman of the Year.