The Internet Society has awarded a number of 33 pioneers and luminaries for outstanding contribution to the creation and the development of the Internet.
The Internet Society (ISOC), a non-profit organization founded in 1992 to “promote the open development, evolution, and use of the Internet for the benefit of all people throughout the world”, has announced the inductees of the inaugural Internet Hall of Fame at the Global INET 2012 conference in Geneva, Switzerland, recognizing 33 pioneers and luminaries who have had an important contribution to the creation and development of the Internet.
Following are the inductees listed alphabetically in three categories, Pioneers - early design and development of the Internet-, Global Connectors - helped to expand the reach of the Internet-, and Innovators - significant contributions to the global growth and use of the Internet.
Pioneers
Paul Baran – a Posthumous Recipient, invented packet switching techniques
Vint Cerf - known as one of the “Fathers of the Internet,” along with Robert Kahn, Leonard Kleinrock, and Larry Roberts, Cerf is the co-designer of the TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the Internet
Danny Cohen – wrote the first packet switching application running over ARPANET
Steve Crocker - he was part of the team that developed the protocols for the ARPANET
Donald Davies - a Posthumous Recipient, coined the “packet” term and he was one of the inventors of packet switching computer networking
Elizabeth Feinler - pioneered and managed first the ARPANET, and then the Defense Data Network (DDN)
Charles Herzfeld - director of the ARPA in the 1960s, overseeing the decision for the creation of ARPANET
Robert Kahn - co-inventor of the TCP/IP protocols and responsible for originating DARPA’s Internet program
Peter Kirstein - started the first European ARPANET node with transatlantic IP connectivity
Leonard Kleinrock - pioneered the mathematical theory of packet networks
John Klensin - was involved in the early procedural and definitional work for DNS administration and top-level domain definitions
Jon Postel – a Posthumous Recipient, involved in the ARPANET project, having an important contribution to the creation of TCP/IP, SMTP and DNS
Louis Pouzin – recognized for participation in early network standardization activities within IFIP, ISO and CCITT, and the design and creation of the CYCLADES computer network and its datagram packet switching network, from which TCP/IP was derived
Lawrence Roberts - designed and managed the first packet network, the ARPANET
Global Connectors
Randy Bush - founder of the Network Startup Resource Center (NSRC), an organization dedicated to deploying networking technologies around the world
Kilnam Chon – had an important role in developing Internet initiatives throughout Asia, such as SDN (1982)
Al Gore - proponent of sponsoring legislation that funded the expansion of and greater public access to the Internet
Nancy Hafkin - pioneer and innovator in the area of networking, development information, and electronic communications contributing to building Africa’s ITC network
Geoff Huston – introduced the Internet to Australia, building the first network in the early 1990s
Brewster Kahle - founder and director of the Internet Archive, a free digital library that archives World Wide Web documents
Daniel Karrenberg - helped build EUnet, the first pan-European Internet Service Provider (ISP) in 1980s
Toru Takahashi – had an important contribution to the introduction of the Internet to Japan and Asia in 1990s
Tan Tin Wee - founded the multilingual Internet DNS and has been instrumental in its internationalization
Innovators
Mitchell Baker – an instrumental player and founder of the Mozilla project, promoting Open Source Internet applications
Tim Berners-Lee – invented the World Wide Web based on URIs, HTTP and HTML in 1989, wrote the first web client and server in 1990
Robert Cailliau – worked with Tim Berners-Lee on a hypertext system for accessing documentation, which later became the WWW
Van Jacobson – wrote the TCP algorithms used by over 90% of the Internet hosts in solving the problem of traffic congestion
Larry Landweber – his networking project, TheoryNet (1977), had an email system for computer scientists. He was the founder of the CSNET (Computer Science Network) project
Paul Mockapetris – invented the DNS in 1983
Craig Newmark - founder of Craigslist, he changed the way people used classifieds, transforming it into a largely Internet-based industry
Raymond Tomlinson – invented the email and decided the use of ‘@’ in an email address
Linus Torvalds – creator of Linux and leading supporter of Open Source projects
Philip Zimmermann – inventor of Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), an email encryption program
Statistical data: these inductees come from 9 different countries, 11 are PhDs, 11 are published authors, 1 is an Academy Award Winner, 1 is an Emmy Award winner, 1 has a degree in Law, 1 is a Nobel Prize Winner, and 1 has been Knighted by Queen Elizabeth.
The Internet Society invites enthusiasts to submit applications for nominee candidates for 2013.