Larry Roberts (computer scientist)

For other people named Lawrence Roberts, see Lawrence Roberts (disambiguation).

Lawrence Roberts
Roberts in 2017
Born
Lawrence Gilman Roberts

(1937-12-21)December 21, 1937
Westport, Connecticut, U.S.
DiedDecember 26, 2018(2018-12-26) (aged 81)
Redwood City, California
Alma materMassachusetts Institute of Technology
Known forARPANET, founding father of the Internet
Awards
Scientific career
InstitutionsLincoln Lab, ARPA, Telenet
Websitepacket.cc
Notes

Larry Roberts (December 21, 1937 – December 26, 2018) was an American computer scientist and Internet pioneer.

As a program manager and later office director at the Advanced Research Projects Agency, Roberts and his team created the ARPANET using packet switching techniques invented by British computer scientist Donald Davies and American engineer Paul Baran.[4][5] The ARPANET's principal designer was Bob Kahn who worked at Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN). Roberts asked Leonard Kleinrock to apply mathematical methods to model and measure the performance of the network. Subsequent ARPA research on communication protocols for internetworking led to the development of the modern Internet.

Roberts later was CEO of the commercial packet-switching network Telenet, the first public data network in North America.

  1. ^ "Lawrence Gilman Roberts" (fee, via Fairfax County Public Library). World of Computer Science. Gale. 2006. Gale Document Number GALE|K2424100099. Retrieved January 16, 2013. Gale Biography In Context (subscription required)
  2. ^ "Big achievements included room-size computers". MIT News. May 21, 2003. Retrieved January 16, 2013.
  3. ^ "Lawrence G. Roberts: 1990 W. Wallace McDowell Award Recipient". IEEE Computer Society. Archived from the original on April 2, 2013. Retrieved January 16, 2013.
  4. ^ Abbate, Jane (1999). Inventing the Internet. MIT Press. p. 3. ISBN 978-0262261333. The manager of the ARPANET project, Lawrence Roberts, assembled a large team of computer scientists ... and he drew on the ideas of network experimenters in the United States and the United Kingdom.
  5. ^ "A Flaw In The Design". The Washington Post. May 30, 2015. Historians credit seminal insights to Welsh scientist Donald W. Davies and American engineer Paul Baran