Leonard Kleinrock

Leonard Kleinrock
Born	(1934-06-13) June 13, 1934 New York City
Residence	Los Angeles
Nationality	United States
Fields	Engineering Computer science
Institutions	UCLA
Alma mater	City College of New York, MIT
Doctoral advisor	Edward Arthurs
Doctoral students	Chris Ferguson
Known for	Internet development
Notable awards	Marconi Prize (1986) Harry H. Goode Memorial Award (1996) National Medal of Science (2007) IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal (2012) BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award (2014)

Leonard Kleinrock (born June 13, 1934) is an American engineer and computer scientist. A computer science professor at UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, he made several important contributions to the field of computer networking, in particular to the theoretical foundations of computer networking. He played an influential role in the development of the ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet, at UCLA.

Education and career

Kleinrock was born in New York City on June 13, 1934 to a Jewish family, and graduated from the noted Bronx High School of Science in 1951. He received a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering degree in 1957 from the City College of New York, and a master's degree and a doctorate (Ph.D.) in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1959 and 1963 respectively. He then joined the faculty at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), where he remains to the present day; during 1991–1995 he served as the Chairman of the Computer Science Department there.

Achievements

Packet switching

Kleinrock's best-known and significant work is his early work on queueing theory, which has applications in many fields, among them as a key mathematical background to packet switching, one of the basic technologies of the Internet. His initial contribution to this field was his doctoral thesis at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1962, published in book form in 1964; he later published several of the standard works on the subject. He described this work as:

"Basically, what I did for my PhD research in 1961–1962 was to establish a mathematical theory of packet networks..."

However, Kleinrock's contribution to packet switching is disputed by some, including Paul Baran and Donald Davies.

His theoretical work on hierarchical routing in the late 1970s with student Farouk Kamoun, is now critical to the operation of today's worldwide Internet.

ARPANET

The first message on the ARPANET was sent by UCLA student programmer Charley Kline, at 10:30 p.m, on October 29, 1969 from Boelter Hall 3420, the school's main building. Supervised by Kleinrock, Kline transmitted from the university's SDS Sigma 7 host computer to the Stanford Research Institute's SDS 940 host computer. The message text was the word "login"; the "l" and the "o" letters were transmitted, but the system then crashed. Hence, the literal first message over the ARPANET was "lo". About an hour later, having recovered from the crash, the SDS Sigma 7 computer effected a full "login". The first permanent ARPANET link was established on November 21, 1969, between the IMP at UCLA and the IMP at the Stanford Research Institute. By December 5, 1969, the entire four-node network was established.

In 1988, Kleinrock was the chairman of a group that presented the report Toward a National Research Network to the U.S. Congress. This report was highly influential and was used to develop the High Performance Computing Act of 1991, that was influential in the development of the Internet as it is known today. Funding from the bill was used in the development of the 1993 web browser Mosaic, at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA).

Room 3420 at Boelter Hall was restored to its condition of 1969 and converted into The Kleinrock Internet Heritage Site and Archive. It opened to the public with a grand opening attended by Internet pioneers on October 29, 2011. Kleinrock claims to have committed the first illegal act on the Internet having sent a request for return of his electric razor after a meeting in England in 1973. At the time, use of the Internet for personal reasons was unlawful.

Awards

File:Internet Hall of Fame inductees 2012.JPG

2012 Internet Hall of Fame inductees, including Leonard Kleinrock (seated, fifth from the left)

He has received numerous professional awards. Kleinrock was selected to receive the prestigious National Medal of Science, the nation's highest scientific honor, from President George W Bush in the White House on September 29, 2008. "The 2007 National Medal of Science to Leonard Kleinrock for his fundamental contributions to the mathematical theory of modern data networks, and for the functional specification of packet switching, which is the foundation of Internet technology. His mentoring of generations of students has led to the commercialization of technologies that have transformed the world." In 2010 he shared the Dan David Prize. In 2012, Kleinrock was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame by the Internet Society. Leonard Kleinrock was inducted into IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu (IEEE-HKN) in 2011 as an Eminent Member. The designation of Eminent Member is the organization's highest membership grade and is conferred upon those select few whose outstanding technical attainments and contributions through leadership in the fields of electrical and computer engineering have significantly benefited society. In September 2014, Leonard Kleinrock was awarded the ACM SIGMOBILE Outstanding Contribution Award at MobiCom 2014.

Leonard Kleinrock has been granted with the 2014 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award “for his seminal contributions to the theory and practical development of the Internet,” in the words of the jury’s citation.

See also

• Internet pioneers
• Nerds 2.0.1 - 1998 documentary in which Kleinrock gives a lengthy interview
• Plan 55-A, a message switching system analyzed in Kleinrock's thesis.

External links

• Kleinrock discusses his work on the ARPANET.

Kleinrock discusses his dissertation work in queuing theory, and his move to the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). As one of the main contractors for the ARPANET, Kleinrock describes his involvement in discussions before the official DARPA request was issued, the people involved in the ARPANET work at UCLA, the installation of the first node of the network, the Network Measurement Center, and his relationships with Lawrence Roberts and the IPT Office, Bolt, Beranek and Newman, and the Network Analysis Corporation.

• Frank describes his work on the ARPANET, including his interaction with Roberts and the IPT Office.
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