Leonard Kleinrock
More info
- Born
- Known for
- Queueing theory for computer networks, ARPANET's first node
- Awards
- National Medal of Science 2007
The UCLA queueing theorist whose lab became ARPANET's first node, and from which the internet's first word — "LO" — was sent.
Kleinrock's doctoral work at MIT in the early 1960s modelled how messages queue and flow through large communication networks — the maths later used to size packet-switched networks. At UCLA he ran the Network Measurement Center, which is where the first IMP was delivered in 1969.
On 29 October that year his student Charley Kline tried to log in to a machine at SRI. The system received "L" and "O" and then crashed. His claim to have laid the theoretical groundwork for packet switching is less settled: supporters of Paul Baran and Donald Davies have never conceded that title without a fight.