Professor Lawrence (Larry) H. Landweber

Born in New York in 1953, he grew up in Brooklyn. He competed on his high school math team. But he never imagined he would become a leader in a technology that has dramatically changed the world. He is one of 33 people from nine countries who were the first to be inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame last April in Geneva. He is Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and until July 2001, he held the John P. Morgridge Chair. He has been on the faculty since 1967, serving as Department Chair during 1977-79 and 1987-90. He received a B.S. in Mathematics from Brooklyn College and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Purdue University in 1967. His doctoral thesis was "A design algorithm for sequential machines and definability in monadic second-order arithmetic." In 1995, he was elected a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery. He is best known for founding the Computer Science Network (CSNET) project in 1979, which later developed into National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET). He is credited with having made the fundamental decision to use the TCP/IP protocol. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development, the parent of the Internet2 project. He also serves as Chair of UCAID's Network Research Liaison Council. He has been President, Chairman of the Board, and Vice President for Education of the Internet Society. He has been a member of the Computer Research Association Board of Directors, the Coordinating Committee on Intercontinental Research Networks, the Office of Technology Assessment Advisory Panel on Information Technology and Research, and National Research Council committees on Computer-Computer Communication Protocols, The Future of the NREN, and Information Technology Strategy for the Library of Congress. Since 1977, he has worked in the area of computer networks. An underlying goal has been the development of computer networks to support research and education. His first project, TheoryNet (1977), involved an email system for theoretical computer scientists. TheoryNet was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). In 1979, he proposed establishment of CSNET, the Computer Science Network. The goal of CSNET was to build a network for all U.S. University and industrial computer research groups. Funded by NSF ($5 million for 5 years), CSNET served as the first large-scale validation of the Internet concept. He was Chair of the project?s management committee during its early years and also led a technical project that designed and implemented an early network-based directory system, "the CSNET nameserver." By 1984, over 180 university, industrial, and government computer science departments were participating in CSNET. Later, he worked with NSF on the development of the NSFNET regional/backbone model, on the network?s acceptable use policy, and on other policy issues. From 1987 to 1992, he led the Wisconsin component of the NSF-DARPA-funded Gigabit Testbed Project. He has been actively involved in the development of the international academic/research Internet. Beginning in 1982, he helped establish the first network gateways between the U.S. and countries in Europe and Asia. This included development of cooperative relationships between CSNET and national network projects. The informal workshops he began organizing in 1983 led to the International Networking Conference, INET, which since 1992 has been the annual conference of the Internet Society. In his capacity as Vice President of the Internet Society he supported the initiation of the Society's Workshops for Developing Countries. These workshops have been a key factor in the spread of the Internet to developing countries. Over the years he has served as a technical consultant to a variety of companies, with emphasis on computing and communications technologies. Current activities are concentrated on working, in a variety of capacities with technology and ecommerce startups. He serves on the Board of Directors of four companies and on the Technical Advisory Boards of two others. In addition, in 2000 he co-founded an angel investment group that concentrates on business opportunities in the Midwest. Among other projects he has led were one of the first Internet protocol implementations (1981-84, IBM VM systems), the first publicly available OSI protocol implementation (1984-87 - UNIX), and implementation of the OSI network management protocol and its secure version (UNIX). He has received numerous awards, including: President, Internet Society; Fellow, ACM; Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters, Brooklyn College, 2009; IEEE Award on International Communication, 2005; Member of the board of Internet2 (2000?2008); Jonathan B. Postel Service Award of the Internet Society, for CSNET, 2009; and in 2012, he was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame by the Internet Society. He is co-author with of Walter S. Brainerd of,. 'T'heory of Computation. New York: Wiley, 1974. ISBN 978-0-471-09585-9.