Robert Kahn

Robert Kahn, known as one of the “Fathers of the Internet,” is co-inventor of the TCP/IP protocols and was responsible for originating the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)’s Internet program.

Kahn demonstrated the U.S. Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) by connecting 20 computers at the International Computer Communication Conference. It was then that people realized the importance of packet-switching technology.

Kahn is currently chair, CEO, and president of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI), which he founded in 1986.

While director of the Information Processing Techniques Office at DARPA, he initiated the Strategic Computing Program, the largest computer research and development program ever undertaken by the federal government. Kahn conceived the idea of open-architecture networking and coined the term National Information Infrastructure (NII) in the mid 1980s, which later became known as the Information Superhighway.

Awards

In December 1997, President Bill Clinton presented the U.S. National Medal of Technology to Kahn and his colleague, Vinton Cerf, for founding and developing the Internet.

In 2004, Kahn was a recipient of the ACM Alan M. Turing award (sometimes called the “Nobel Prize of Computer Science”), and in 2005, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George Bush.

He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in May 2006, and awarded the Japan Prize for his work in “Information Communication Theory and Technology” in 2008.

He received the Harold Pender Award from the University of Pennsylvania in 2010, the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering in 2013, and the Benjamin Franklin Medal in 2018.

Education

Kahn received an engineering degree from City College of New York. He received a master’s degree and a doctorate in electrical engineering from Princeton University.

He has also received honorary degrees from Princeton, the University of Pavia, ETH Zurich, the University of Maryland, George Mason University, the University of Central Florida, The City College of New York, and the University of Pisa, and an honorary fellowship from University College, London.