Larry Roberts life and biography

Lawrence G. Roberts (born 1937 in Connecticut) received the Draper Prize in 2001 and the Principe de Asturias Award in 2002 "for the development of the Internet" along with Leonard Kleinrock, Robert Kahn, and Vinton Cerf.

As a program manager and office director at the Advanced Research Projects Agency, Roberts and his team created packet switching and the ARPANET, which was the predecessor to the modern Internet.

After receiving his PhD, Roberts continued to work at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory.Having read the seminal 1961 paper of the "Intergalactic Computer Network" by J. C. R. Licklider, Roberts developed the concept of a computer-to-computer network that could communicate via data packets.

In 1966, he became program manager in the ARPA Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO), which funded the development of the ARPANET. When Robert Taylor was sent to Vietnam in 1969 and then resigned, Roberts became director of the IPTO. The second node on the ARPANET was another important research project funded by Roberts: the Augmentation Research Center led by Douglas Englebart.

In 1973, Roberts left ARPA to commercialize the nascent packet-switching technology in the form of Telenet, the first packet switch utility company, and served as its CEO from 1973 to 1980. He was CEO of NetExpress, an Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) equipment company, from 1983 to 1993.

Roberts was president of ATM Systems from 1993 to 1998. He was chairman and CTO of Caspian Networks, but left in early 2004; Caspian ceased operation in late 2006.

As of 2011, Roberts was the founder and chairman of Anagran Inc. Anagran continues work in the same area as Caspian: IP flow management with improved Quality of Service for the Internet.

Awards and honors:
- IEEE Harry M. Goode Memorial Award (1976 ), "In recognition of his contributions to the architectural design of computer-communication systems, his leadership in creating a fertile research environment leading to advances in computer and satellite communications techniques, his role in the establishment of standard international communication protocols and procedures, and his accomplishments in development and demonstration of packet switching technology and the ensuing networks which grew out of this work."
-L.M. Ericsson Prize (1982) in Sweden
-Member, National Academy of Engineering (1978)
-Computer Design Hall of Fame Award (1982)
-IEEE W. Wallace McDowell Award (1990), "For architecting packet switching technology and bringing it into practical use by means of the ARPA network."
-Association for Computing Machinery SIGCOMM Award (1998), for "visionary contributions and advanced technology development of computer communication networks".
-IEEE Internet Award (2000) For "early, preeminent contributions in conceiving, analyzing and demonstrating packet-switching networks, the foundation technology of the Internet."
-International Engineering Consortium Fellow Award (2001)
-National Academy of Engineering Charles Stark Draper Prize (2001), "for the development of the Internet"
-Principe de Asturias Award 2002 in Spain "for designing and implementing a system that is changing the world by providing previously unthought of opportunities for social and scientific progress."
-NEC C&C Award (2005) in Japan "For Contributions to Establishing the Foundation of Today's Internet Technology through...the Design and Development of ARPANET and Other Early Computer Networks that were Part of the Initial Internet."

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