Portal:Internet/Selected biography/10

Vinton Gray Cerf (born June 23, 1943) is an American computer scientist who is the "person most often called 'the father of the Internet'." His contributions have been recognized repeatedly, with honorary degrees and awards that include the National Medal of Technology, the Turing Award, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Cerf's first job after getting his B.S. in mathematics from Stanford University was at IBM, where he worked for less than two years as a systems engineer supporting QUIKTRAN. He left IBM to become a principal programmer at UCLA; he then became an assistant professor at Stanford University where he co-designed the Department of Defense TCP/IP protocol suite with Robert E. Kahn. Cerf joined the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in 1999, and is serving a term until the end of 2007; he previously served as the ICANN Chair.