Biography

Robert Elliot Kahn is an American electrical engineer, one of the principal architects, with Vinton Cerf, of the Internet. In 2004 both Kahn and Cerf won the A.M. Turing Award for their "pioneering work on internetworking, including the design and implementation of the Internet’s basic communications protocols, TCP/IP, and for inspired leadership in networking".

Right after completing his doctorate at Princeton, Dr. Kahn worked for Bell Labs and MIT. As a senior scientist at Bolt Beranek & Newman, an engineering consulting firm, he became instrumental in designing ARPANET, a predecessor of Internet. In 1972 Kahn left BB&N for DARPA’s Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) where he worked on developing the Internet’s technical protocols. In 2001 he was among four individuals honored by the U.S. National Academy of Engineering with the Charles Stark Draper Prize for his role in developing the Internet.