History of Computers - Leonard Kleinrock

Andre Gras

Leonard Kleinrock (June 13, 1934-present) is an engineer and a computer scientist. He has 4 children and six grandchildren.

Overview

Leonard Kleinrock received his bachelors at CCNY, and a Masters and Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology respectively.Leonard Kleinrock has made several contributions to the field of computer networking. He is a computer science professor at UCLA, where he served as the chairman of the Computer Science Department. Kleinrock earned the nation's highest scientific honor, the National Medal of Science. He mentors and mentored "generations of students that have led to the commercialization of technologies that have changed the world". He was dubbed the "Father of the Internet", and received his Ph.D. at MIT. He also directed the transmission of the first message on the internet. Kleinrock is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. Kleinrock himself said that "The network is so flexible, and it's such an open network in terms of competition and architecture that if anyone began to flex some power, someone else would step in to compete with them." He also took part in the building and management of the first packet switched network. He helped develop ARPANET and created the first node at UCLA. He is also an author that has published over 250 papers and six books.

Significance

He is most significant for his work on queueing theory, which has many applications, and was used as a key mathematical background for packet switching, the basic technology behind the Internet. Packet switching revolutionized the methods of transmitting data because they optimized the utilization of link capacity and increased the methods of communicating. His theoretical work on hierarchical routing is now critical to the operation of the Internet. As well as practically developing the internet, Kleinrock teaches at UCLA and mentors students who move on to create new technological wonders. He also was the chairman of a group who provided a report that highly influenced Al Gore into creating the Gore Bill, which was influential in the developing of the internet as well.

Links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Kleinrock

http://www.greatachievements.org/?id=3736

http://www.lk.cs.ucla.edu/

http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~lk/profile.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Samueli_School_of_Engineering_and_Applied_Science

http://thinkexist.com/quotes/leonard_kleinrock/