Robert Melancton Metcalfe (born April 7, 1946) is an engineer and entrepreneur from the United States who helped pioneer the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a ''internetworking, network of networks'' that consists ...
starting in 1970. He co-invented
Ethernet
Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in ...
, co-founded
3Com
3Com Corporation was an American digital electronics manufacturer best known for its computer network products. The company was co-founded in 1979 by Robert Metcalfe, Howard Charney and others. Bill Krause joined as President in 1981. Metcalfe e ...
and formulated Metcalfe's law, which describes the effect of a telecommunications network. Since January 2011, he has been Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at
The University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the county seat, seat and largest city of Travis County, Te ...
. He is also the Murchison Fellow of Free Enterprise.
Metcalfe has received various awards, including the
IEEE Medal of Honor
The IEEE Medal of Honor is the highest recognition of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). It has been awarded since 1917, when its first recipient was Major Edwin H. Armstrong. It is given for an exceptional contributio ...
and
National Medal of Technology and Innovation
The National Medal of Technology and Innovation (formerly the National Medal of Technology) is an honor granted by the President of the United States to American inventors and innovators who have made significant contributions to the development ...
for his work developing Ethernet technology.
In addition to his accomplishments, Metcalfe has made several predictions which failed to come to pass, separately forecasting the demise of the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a ''internetworking, network of networks'' that consists ...
,
wireless networks
A wireless network is a computer network that uses wireless data connections between network nodes.
Wireless networking is a method by which homes, telecommunications networks and business installations avoid the costly process of introducing ...
, and
open-source software
Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Ope ...
during the 1990s.
Early life
Robert Metcalfe was born in 1946 in Brooklyn, New York. His father was a test technician who specialized in gyroscopes. His mother was a homemaker, but later became the secretary at
Bay Shore High School
Bay Shore High School is a public high school located in Bay Shore, New York. The school serves about 2,000 students in grades 9 to 12.MIT Class of 1968. He finally graduated from MIT in 1969 with two S.B. degrees, one in electrical engineering and the other in industrial management from the
MIT Sloan School of Management
The MIT Sloan School of Management (MIT Sloan or Sloan) is the business school of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
MIT Sloan offers bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree programs, a ...
. He then went to Harvard for graduate school, earning his M.S. in applied mathematics in 1970 and his
PhD PHD or PhD may refer to:
* Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification
Entertainment
* '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series
* ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic
* Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group
** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...
in computer science (applied mathematics) in 1973.
Career
While pursuing a doctorate in computer science, Metcalfe took a job with MIT's
Project MAC
Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is a research institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) formed by the 2003 merger of the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) and the Artificial Intelligence La ...
after Harvard refused to let him be responsible for connecting the school to the brand-new
ARPAnet
The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control and one of the first networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite. Both technologies became the technical foun ...
. At MAC, Metcalfe was responsible for building some of the hardware that would link MIT's minicomputers with the ARPAnet. ARPAnet was initially the topic of his doctoral dissertation, but the first version was not accepted. His inspiration for a new dissertation came while working at
Xerox PARC
PARC (Palo Alto Research Center; formerly Xerox PARC) is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California. Founded in 1969 by Jacob E. "Jack" Goldman, chief scientist of Xerox Corporation, the company was originally a division of Xer ...
, where he read a paper about the ALOHA network at the
University of Hawaii
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase ''universitas magistrorum et scholarium'', which ...
. He identified and fixed some of the bugs in the AlohaNet model and made his analysis part of a revised thesis, which finally earned him his Harvard
PhD PHD or PhD may refer to:
* Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification
Entertainment
* '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series
* ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic
* Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group
** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...
in 1973.
Metcalfe was working at PARC in 1973 when he and David Boggs invented
Ethernet
Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in ...
, initially a standard for connecting computers over short distances. Metcalfe identifies the day Ethernet was born as May 22, 1973, the day he circulated a memo titled "Alto Ethernet" which contained a rough schematic of how it would work. "That is the first time Ethernet appears as a word, as does the idea of using coax as
ether
In organic chemistry, ethers are a class of compounds that contain an ether group—an oxygen atom connected to two alkyl or aryl groups. They have the general formula , where R and R′ represent the alkyl or aryl groups. Ethers can again b ...
, where the participating stations, like in AlohaNet or ARPAnet, would inject their packets of data, they'd travel around at megabits per second, there would be collisions, and retransmissions, and back-off," Metcalfe explained. Boggs identifies another date as the birth of Ethernet: November 11, 1973, the first day the system actually functioned.
In 1979, Metcalfe departed PARC and co-founded
3Com
3Com Corporation was an American digital electronics manufacturer best known for its computer network products. The company was co-founded in 1979 by Robert Metcalfe, Howard Charney and others. Bill Krause joined as President in 1981. Metcalfe e ...
, a manufacturer of
computer networking
A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections ar ...
equipment, in his
Palo Alto
Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto.
The city was es ...
apartment. In 1980 he received the
ACM
ACM or A.C.M. may refer to:
Aviation
* AGM-129 ACM, 1990–2012 USAF cruise missile
* Air chief marshal
* Air combat manoeuvring or dogfighting
* Air cycle machine
* Arica Airport (Colombia) (IATA: ACM), in Arica, Amazonas, Colombia
Computing
* ...
Grace Hopper Award for his contributions to the development of local networks, specifically Ethernet. In 1990, in a boardroom skirmish, the 3Com board of directors chose Éric Benhamou to succeed Bill Krause as CEO of the networking company instead of Metcalfe. Metcalfe left 3Com and began a 10-year stint as a publisher and pundit, writing an
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a ''internetworking, network of networks'' that consists ...
column for
InfoWorld
''InfoWorld'' (abbreviated IW) is an information technology media business. Founded in 1978, it began as a monthly magazine. In 2007, it transitioned to a web-only publication. Its parent company today is International Data Group, and its sister ...
. He became a
venture capitalist
Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to start-up company, startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth poten ...
in 2001 and is now a general partner at Polaris Venture Partners. In 1997, he co-founded Pop!Tech, an executive technology conference.
In November 2010 Metcalfe was selected to lead innovation initiatives at
The University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the county seat, seat and largest city of Travis County, Te ...
's
Cockrell School of Engineering
The Cockrell School of Engineering is one of the eighteen colleges within the University of Texas at Austin. It has more than 8,000 students enrolled in eleven undergraduate and thirteen graduate programs. The college is ranked 10th in the world a ...
. He began his appointment in January 2011 and retired as an Emeritus Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the end of 2021.
Metcalfe was a keynote speaker at the 2016 Congress of Future Science and Technology Leaders and in 2019 he presented the
Bernard Price Memorial Lecture
The Bernard Price Memorial Lecture is the premier annual lecture of the South African Institute of Electrical Engineers. It is of general scientific or engineering interest and is given by an invited guest, often from overseas, at several of the m ...
in South Africa.
In June of 2022, Metcalfe announced he would be returning to MIT full-time to join the CSAIL lab as a Research Affiliate and Computational Engineer working with the MIT
Julia (programming language)
Julia is a high-level, dynamic programming language. Its features are well suited for numerical analysis and computational science.
Distinctive aspects of Julia's design include a type system with parametric polymorphism in a dynamic progra ...
Lab.
Awards
In 1996, Metcalfe was awarded the
IEEE Medal of Honor
The IEEE Medal of Honor is the highest recognition of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). It has been awarded since 1917, when its first recipient was Major Edwin H. Armstrong. It is given for an exceptional contributio ...
for "exemplary and sustained leadership in the development, standardization, and commercialization of
Ethernet
Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in ...
."
In 1997, he was elected as a member into the
National Academy of Engineering
The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of ...
for the development of the Ethernet.
In 2003 he received the Marconi Award for "For inventing the Ethernet and promulgating his Law of network utility based on the square of the node
On March 14, 2003, Metcalfe received the
National Medal of Technology
The National Medal of Technology and Innovation (formerly the National Medal of Technology) is an honor granted by the President of the United States to American inventors and innovators who have made significant contributions to the development ...
from President Bush in a White House ceremony "for leadership in the invention, standardization, and commercialization of
Ethernet
Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in ...
".
In May 2007, along with 17 others, Metcalfe, was inducted to the
National Inventors Hall of Fame
The National Inventors Hall of Fame (NIHF) is an American not-for-profit organization, founded in 1973, which recognizes individual engineers and inventors who hold a U.S. patent of significant technology. Besides the Hall of Fame, it also oper ...
in
Akron, Ohio
Akron () is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Summit County. It is located on the western edge of the Glaciated Allegheny Plateau, about south of downtown Cleveland. As of the 2020 Census, the city ...
, for his work with Ethernet technology.
In October 2008, Metcalfe received the Fellow Award from the
Computer History Museum
The Computer History Museum (CHM) is a museum of computer history, located in Mountain View, California. The museum presents stories and artifacts of Silicon Valley and the information age, and explores the computing revolution and its impact ...
"for fundamental contributions to the invention, standardization, and commercialization of Ethernet."
Web predictions
Metcalfe predicted in 1995 that the Internet would suffer a "catastrophic collapse" the following year; he promised to eat his words if it did not. During his keynote speech at the sixth International World Wide Web Conference in 1997, he took a printed copy of his column that predicted the collapse, put it in a blender with some liquid and then consumed the pulpy mass. He had tried to eat his words printed on a very large cake, but the audience would not accept this form of "eating his words."
Selected publications
* "Packet Communication", MIT Project MAC Technical Report MAC TR-114, December 1973 (a recast version of Metcalfe's Harvard dissertation)
* "Zen and the Art of Selling", Technology Review, May/June 1992
Computer History Museum
The Computer History Museum (CHM) is a museum of computer history, located in Mountain View, California. The museum presents stories and artifacts of Silicon Valley and the information age, and explores the computing revolution and its impact ...