Bob Kahn

Robert Elliot Kahn (born December 23, 1938), commonly known as Bob Kahn, is an American electrical engineer, who, along with Vinton Cerf, is known for co-inventing the Internet Protocol (IP), the principal communications protocol in the Internet protocol suite for relaying datagrams across network boundaries. His work on the Internet, and its predecessor the ARPANET, has earned him the nickname "father of the Internet."

Early Life and Education

Bob Kahn was born in Brooklyn, New York. He received a B.E.E. degree from the City College of New York in 1960, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Princeton University in electrical engineering in 1962 and 1964, respectively. His doctoral dissertation was on the problem of error propagation in signal processing.

Career

Kahn began his career at Bell Labs in 1964, working on the Secure Communications Project. In 1972, he moved to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), where he played a key role in the development of the ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet. It was here that he met Vinton Cerf, and together they developed the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP), which were published in 1974. These protocols allowed multiple networks to be interconnected into a network of networks—the Internet.

In 1986, Kahn left DARPA to found the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI), a non-profit organization aimed at fostering research for the National Information Infrastructure. At CNRI, Kahn continued his work on digital object architecture, which is aimed at providing a framework for managing digital objects on the Internet.

Awards and Honors

Bob Kahn has received numerous awards and honors for his contributions to computer science and the development of the Internet. These include the ACM Turing Award (2004), which he shared with Vinton Cerf for their pioneering work on internetworking, including the design and implementation of the Internet's basic communications protocols, TCP/IP, and for inspired leadership in networking. He has also been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2005), the United States' highest civilian honor, and the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering (2013).

Legacy

Bob Kahn's work on the TCP/IP protocols laid the foundation for the modern Internet, transforming it from a limited government and academic network into a global system of interconnected networks that supports billions of users. His vision and leadership have been instrumental in the development of digital communication and have had a profound impact on the way people communicate, access information, and conduct business around the world.

See Also

• Vinton Cerf
• Internet Protocol Suite
• ARPANET
• Digital Object Architecture

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