Vinton G. Cerf (born June 23, 1943) is commonly referred to as the "father of the Internet". During his tenure from 1976 to 1982 with the United States Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Cerf played a key role leading the development of Internet and Internet-related data packet and security technologies, including co-designing the TCP/IP protocol. As vice president of MCI Digital Information Services from 1982 to 1986, he led the engineering of MCI Mail, the first commercial email service to be connected to the Internet. In December 1997, he was presented the U.S. National Medal of Technology by President Bill Clinton, along with his partner Robert E. Kahn, for these accomplishments.

Cerf holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics from Stanford University and Master of Science and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from UCLA. He also holds honorary Doctorates from the University of the Balearic Islands, ETH in Switzerland, Capitol College and Gettysburg College.

He is the author of several RFCs, and founder of ISOC.

Vint Cerf is also working on the Interplanetary Protocol, which will be a new standard to communicate from planet to planet, which will be radio/laser communications that are hightly tolerant to signal degradation. http://www.ipnsig.org/

He and his family reside in Virginia, USA.

In 1995 (or 1996?) he was awarded the Yuri Rubinsky Memorial Award.

In October 2002 he was awarded (together with Bob Kahn, Larry Roberts and Tim Berners-Lee) Premio Principe de Asturias de Investigacion Cientifica. The most distinguished spanish awards.

He is one of the most enthusiastic and prolific people in the internet community. And helping to preserve the history of the internet contributing to projects like WiWiW (Who is Who in the Internet World)

External link

• The WiWiW Project homepage (http://www.veabaro.info/stanford/wiwiw.htm)

External link

• Vint Cerf's homepage (http://mci.com/cerfsup/)