Why is the life of Bob Kahn an inspiring one?

    Bob Kahn was born on December 23rd, 1938 in New York to Lawrence Kahn and Beatrice Pauline.

      Noted as academically brilliant, Kahn earned his BEE in Electrical Engineering from the City College of New York and PhD in the same subject from Princeton University. Two years later, he joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as an assistant professor.

      By 1972, Kahn moved to DARPA, and became the Director of its Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO). It was then that he put forth the idea of open-networking, and co-invented the TCP and IP protocols along with Vint Cerf for connecting diverse computer networks.

      Dr. Kahn has also served as the president of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI), a group for the development of network technologies for the public.

      He was honoured by the US National Academy of Engineering with the Charles Stark Draper Prize in 2001. The Turing Award, Marconi Prize, Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, and the Presidential Medal for Freedom are among the many awards Kahn has received till date.