Robert E Kahn

Inventor of the TCP protocol, and co inventor of the IP protocol.

Schedule:

1730 hours, 25th January, 2008

About the speaker:

If Henry Ford is said to have revolutionized the nascent automobile industry by making ‘a car for the great multitude’ possible, then it would be befitting to crown Robert E. Kahn as the Henry Ford of the Internet revolution.

While working on three different packet network projects, Dr Kahn came up with a plan to interconnect them, and developed initial ideas of what became TCP/IP (Transmission Control Potocol/ Internet Protocol). This work culminated in the development and demonstration of an open-architecture network model, where any network could transfer information to any other network independent of individual hardware and software configuration. Adaptation of this path-breaking technology has made possible the large scale internet proliferation that we see today.

He collaborated with Vinton Cerf, then at Stanford University, on the development of the protocols and on the evolution of the Internet. Dr. Kahn became Director of the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) where he was joined by Dr. Cerf.

Born on Dec 23, 1938, Dr Kahn received M.A. & Ph.D degrees from the Princeton University after completing a B.E.E degree at City College of New York. He worked first at Bell Labs, as an Assistant Professor at MIT, and then as a senior scientist at BBN before joining IPTO in late 1972. He continues to play an important role in fostering the development of the so-called Information Super Highway as the founder President & CEO of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI).

Dr Kahn is the recipient of numerous awards, noteworthy among which are the National Medal of Technology, A.M. Turing Award, IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal & the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2006, he was inducted in the National Inventors Hall of Fame.