OR/MS Today - December 1999

December 1999

President's Award Sets Record Straight

UCLA's Kleinrock honored for crucial role in establishment and development of Internet

In a political blunder he's still trying to live down, Vice President Al Gore once claimed that he created the Internet. Gore's statement must have come as news to Professor Leonard Kleinrock of UCLA who did, indeed, play a crucial role in the establishment of the Internet and in its subsequent development.

INFORMS President Tom Magnani helped set the record straight at the recent INFORMS Philadelphia Fall 1999 Meeting when he presented Kleinrock with the 1999 INFORMS President's Award for Kleinrock's "wide-ranging and fundamental contributions to the birth and development of the Internet, and thereby to the global welfare of society."

In the award citation, Magnanti noted that "Kleinrock published the first paper on packet switching theory in 1961 and the first book on the subject in 1964, both of which made essential use of queueing theory and other operations research techniques. Having proven the theoretical advantages of packet switching over circuit switching, he helped convince others to implement experimental networks based on these principles. This led to the 1968 decision to build ARPANET, the immediate predecessor of the Internet."

The INFORMS President's Award is presented each year to members of the operations research community in recognition of their effective and important contributions to public policy analysis and society at large.

On the UCLA faculty since 1963, Professor Kleinrock founded and ran the Network Measurement Center there, which was selected as the site of the first ARPANET node. This node was set up at UCLA in September 1969 under his direction, and a month later he supervised the sending of the first host-to-host message to a second node in the Bay Area. His "Queueing Systems, Volume II" was the first book on the ARPANET, and it has been widely adopted and much acclaimed (e.g., the 1976 Lanchester Prize).

"The ARPANET became today's Internet, which has grown with astonishing speed to more than 50 million host computers as of this writing," Magnanti noted. "This could not have happened without important contributions by many people, but Kleinrock's were as seminal as any. He has continued to be influential in the Internet community as a researcher, teacher and public policy advisor.

"His computer networking research is reported in more than 200 papers and six books, and has won numerous prestigious awards. These include the Ericsson Prize from Sweden, the Marconi Award from Belgium, and membership in the National Academy of Engineering.

"His excellence in classroom teaching is proven by several distinguished teaching awards, and he has produced more than 40 doctoral graduates in computer networking, many of whom have gone on to important positions in academia and industry.

"His impact on public policy is most visible in the two studies he chaired for the National Research Council in 1988 and 1994. The first was influential on then Senator Al Gore, and helped stimulate the development of high speed networks. The second presented a powerful vision of the National Information Infrastructure and brought national focus and clarity to numerous pertinent policy issues still in the public eye today.

"The Internet is, of course, the basis for one of the greatest revolutions since the dawn of the Industrial Age. This revolution is permitting people around the world to interact and collaborate with each other far more easily than ever, enabling information dissemination on a vastly larger scale than ever before, undermining the social sustainability of totalitarian political regimes, creating new kinds of work and leisure activities, and dramatically reshaping the world of business in ways that improve its efficiency."

Presidential Gallery

The INFORMS Board has approved the establishment of a photo gallery of former presidents of TIMS, ORSA and INFORMS at the Institute's headquarters in Linthicum, Md. The Pictures of Past Presidents project was initiated by the INFORMS History and Traditions Committee. The committee includes Arjang Assad, Frank Trippi, Carl Harris and Randy Robinson.

The first group of photographs will include the initial 10 presidents of both ORSA and TIMS. The presidential gallery will be known as the Hugh J. Miser Presidential Gallery in honor of the 11th president of ORSA who died earlier this year.

"The early push for the societies to recognize our historical legacy came from our dear friend, Hugh Miser, " Harris says. "We can think of no better tribute to Hugh's memory than to name the gallery in his honor. Hugh was such a moving force in all projects concerned with the history of the profession, that I also feel that it is most appropriate for us to include his photograph in our gallery as soon as we can. Our current target date for the dedication of the gallery is January 2000."

For further information or to make a pledge, contact INFORMS headquarters, (410) 850-0300.

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