Vinton Cerf M.A. ’70, Ph.D. ’72

Vinton Cerf M.A. '70, Ph.D. '72 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.

In the early days, Cerf was a DOD DARPA program manager funding various groups to develop TCP/IP technology.

During his graduate student years, Cerf studied under Professor Gerald Estrin, worked in Professor Leonard Kleinrock's data packet networking group that connected the first two nodes of the ARPANet, the predecessor to the Internet, and contributed to a host-to-host protocol for the ARPANet. While at UCLA, he also met Robert Kahn, who was working on the ARPANet hardware architecture. After receiving his doctorate, Cerf became an assistant professor at Stanford University from 1972-76, where he conducted research on packet network interconnection protocols and co-designed the DoD TCP/IP protocol suite with Kahn.

When the Internet began to transition to a commercial opportunity, Cerf moved to MCI/WorldCom, then moved to Google.

Cerf was instrumental in the funding and formation of ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) from the start, eventually joining the ICANN board and becoming the chairman of ICANN.

Cerf has worked for Google as its vice president and chief Internet evangelist since September 2005. He has become well known for his predictions on how technology will affect future society, encompassing such areas as artificial intelligence, environmentalism, the advent of IPv6 and the transformation of the television industry and its delivery model.