UCLA's Leonard Kleinrock to receive National Medal of Science

Internet pioneer recognized with nation's highest scientific honor

President George W. Bush announced today that UCLA Distinguished Professor of Computer Science Leonard Kleinrock has been selected to receive the prestigious National Medal of Science.

Established by Congress in 1959 and administered by the National Science Foundation, the medal is the nation's highest scientific honor. Kleinrock and seven other distinguished scientists will receive the medal at a White House ceremony on Sept. 29.

"I am thrilled and greatly honored," said Kleinrock, a member of UCLA's faculty since 1963, the year he received his doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Kleinrock created the basic principles of packet switching, the technology underpinning the Internet. He developed the mathematical theory of data networks a decade before the Internet's birth, which occurred when his host computer at UCLA became the first node of what was then known as the ARPANET in September 1969. He wrote the first paper and published the first book on the subject, and directed the transmission of the first message to pass over the Internet.

He was also responsible for setting up and running the Network Measurement Center, which tested the limits of the early Internet to evaluate its performance and behavior and improve its operation.

"Leonard Kleinrock is an outstanding scholar and a highly influential pioneer of the Internet," said UCLA Chancellor Gene Block. "His groundbreaking research has been instrumental in improving society and the way we live our lives. This honor is richly deserved."

Kleinrock is receiving the National Medal of Science for "fundamental contributions to the mathematical theory of modern data networks, for the functional specification of packet switching which is the foundation of Internet Technology, for mentoring generations of students and for leading the commercialization of technologies that have transformed the world," the National Science Foundation's citation reads.

UCLA became the first node of what was known as the ARPANET on Sept. 2, 1969, when Kleinrock led a team of engineers in establishing the first network connection between two computers, ushering in a new method of global communication.

The first network switch, known as an Interface Message Processor (IMP), arrived at UCLA on Labor Day weekend, 1969. The UCLA team led by Kleinrock had to connect the first host computer to the IMP. This was a challenging task, as no such connection had ever been attempted before. However, by the end of the first day, bits began moving between the UCLA computer and the IMP. By the next day, researchers had messages moving between the machines.

A month later, a second node was added at the Stanford Research Institute, and on Oct. 29, 1969, the first host-to-host message was launched from UCLA.

"When we sent that first message, there weren't any reporters, cameras, tape recorders or scribes to document that major event," Kleinrock said. "We knew we were creating an important new technology that we expected would be of use to a segment of the population, but we had no idea how truly momentous an event it was."