CSAIL Senior Research Scientist David Clark and CSAIL Visiting Scientist Richard Stallman are two of the 2013 inductees into the Internet Hall of Fame. J.C.R. Licklider, a director of Project MAC (the precursor to CSAIL), and MIT alumnus Robert Metcalfe were also inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame as part of the class of 2013.
The Internet Hall of Fame, an annual awards program that has been established by the Internet Society, aims to publicly recognize a distinguished and select group of visionaries, leaders and luminaries who have made significant contributions to the development and advancement of the Internet.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, a principal investigator at CSAIL, was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame as part of the inaugural class of 2012.
Clark was inducted into the Pioneers Circle of the Internet Hall of Fame, which recognizes individuals who were instrumental in the early design and development of the Internet. A leader in the development of the Internet, Clark served as Chief Protocol Architect for the Internet from 1981-1989, and chaired the Internet Activities Board. He implemented Internet protocols for the Multics system, the Xerox PARC ALTO, and the IBM PC.
Stallman was honored as an Innovator, defined by the Internet Hall of Fame as an individual who made outstanding technological, commercial, regulatory or policy advances and helped to expand the Internet’s reach. Stallman is the president of the Free Software Foundation and led the charge behind the development of the GNU operating system. He currently serves as an advocate for various issues of freedom in the computing field such as Internet surveillance and censorship.
Licklider, a professor in the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and a director of Project MAC starting in 1968, was honored as a Pioneer in the Internet Hall of Fame for his work formulating the earliest ideas of global networking. His ideas eventually led to the creation of the ARPAnet, the predecessor of the Internet. Metcalfe also predicted the use of computer networks as tools for communication.
While working on Project MAC, Metcalfe built a high-speed network interface and protocol software between a packet switching ARPAnet IMP and PDP-10 time-sharing minicomputer. He wrote the memo inventing the Ethernet, and in 1979 founded 3Com Corp, provider of Internet hardware and software. Metcalfe was honored as a Pioneer in the Internet Hall of Fame.
Berners-Lee, a principal investigator at CSAIL and leader of the Decentralized Information Group (DIG), was honored as an Internet Hall of Fame Innovator in 2012. Berners-Lee invented the Internet in 1989 an internet-based hypermedia initiative for global information sharing while at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory. He wrote the first web client and server in 1990. He is the Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), a Web standards organization founded in 1994 that develops interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) to lead the Web to its full potential.
For more information on the Internet Hall of Fame, please visit: http://internethalloffame.org/.