Honorary degree citation - Leonard Kleinrock

By: Sudhir P. Mudur, June 2013

Mr. Chancellor, it is my honour to present to you Leonard Kleinrock, engineer, inventor, teacher, and a founder father of the Internet.

Leonard Kleinrock, a Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at UCLA, has made seminal research contributions in communication networks, establishing the fundamental principles upon which many of the most important aspects of computer networking and information communications are based.

As a graduate student at MIT in the early 1960s, he developed the key mathematical background to packet switching, the fundamental building block of the Internet.

His founding work on Internet technology arose from his Host computer becoming the first node of the network directing the first message transmission on the 29th of October in 1969.

Further, his theoretical work on hierarchical routing is now critical to the operation of today's world-wide Internet.

A recipient of numerous honorary degrees and honors, he has published extensively on packet switching networks, packet radio networks, local area networks, broadband networks, gigabit networks, nomadic computing, intelligent software agents, performance evaluation, and peer-to-peer networks.

Throughout his career Kleinrock has been a tireless proponent and spokesperson behind the development of computer and communications networks.

Both directly and indirectly, Kleinrock has made countless contributions to global efforts in information communications.

Through his profound accomplishments over 45 years, Kleinrock has inspired generations of researchers, both students and coworkers, who today span the computer networking field.

Mr. Chancellor, on behalf of Senate and the Board of Governors, it is my privilege and honour to present to you, Leonard Kleinrock so that you may confer upon him the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa.