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Paul Baran, IEEE ComSoc Fellow, Pioneer of Internet, Dies at 84
Paul Baran, an IEEE Communications Society Fellow, long time member of ComSoc, one of the founding fathers of the Internet, has passed at the age of 84.
Mr. Baran was born in Poland on April 29, 1926 in Grodno, and moved with his parents to the US in 1928. He grew up in Philadelphia and later graduated from Drexel Institute of Technology in 1949 with a B.S. degree in electrical engineering, and an M.S. in Engineering from the University of California, LA in 1959.
One of his first jobs was working on the first commercial computer, the UNIVAC. Mr. Baran joined the RAND Corporation in 1959, where he remained until 1968. Mr. Baran's work in the 1960s at the RAND Corporation formed the foundation for what became the Internet. At the time, Paul Baran, as a young engineer at the Rand Corporation, began thinking about how to build a communications network which could survive a buclear first strike. In 1960, Baran described a technique he called "distributed communication" in which each communication node would be connected to several other communication nodes. Switching was thus distributed throughout the network, giving it a high degree of survivability. To move data through this network, Baran adopted message switching, which digitized the information to be sent, broke it into chunks of 1024 bits, and provided a header containing routing information. A message would then be reconstructed at the receiving node. Baran described his proposed system in great detail in the summer of 1964 in an eleven-volume Rand publication entitled "On Distributed Communications." Baran and another engineer conceived of "packet switching" as the best means to transfer data in a computer network. A few years later, their ideas were incorporated into the ARPANET.
After leaving RAND, Mr. Baran co-found the Institute for the Future, a nonprofit research group specializing in long-range forecasting. He was also an entrepreneur. He started seven companies, five of which eventually went public.
In 2000, Mr. Baran jointly received the IEEE Internet Award "for their early, preeminent contributions in conceiving, analyzing and demonstrating packet-switching networks, the foundation technology of the Internet."
As an IEEE member from student to Life Fellow, Mr. Baran served as session chairman for a number of IEEE Communications Society events along the way. His first publication outside of RAND about packet switching was a 1964 paper published in the Transactions of the Communications Society.
Among many career awards, in 1987, Mr. Baran received IEEE Communications Society’s Edwin Howard Armstrong Achievement Award. In 1990, he received IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal "For pioneering in Packet Switching."
Mr. Baran reportedly died Saturday 26 March 2011 at his home in Palo Alto, California, from complications caused by lung cancer. He was married to Evelyn Baran who died in 2007. He is survived by his son David, three grandchildren; and his companion of recent years, Ruth Rothman.
Paul will be deeply missed.
March SuperFan Awards Winners Announced
Congratulations to March 2011 Super Fans for their outstanding participations and support on IEEE Communications Society social media.
We have four winners this month: Eltijani Osman Elrayah, Alejandro Ortiz Vega, Abdulaziz Mohammed AlYami, Ana Maria Ospina Bolanos. Their ComSoc SuperFan Awards Certificates will soon be ready for download from the IEEE ComSoc Facebook page.
2011 ComSoc membership is required to receive the award certificates.
Thinking about joining the world's leading membership organization for communications professionals? A special introductory membership promotion for new joins has just launched. Visit www.comsoc.org/newjoinspecial
Online Only Publication Opens to All
IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, an online publication from IEEE Communications Society, offers free access to all IEEE and ComSoc members, as well as all who follow their interests in communications technologies. The publication provides researchers and other communications professionals with the ideal venue for publishing online tutorials and surveys that are exposed to an unlimited global audience.
Surveys & Tutorials aims to be a premier source of peer-reviewed, comprehensive tutorials and surveys, and pointers to further sources. Readers can search for in-depth information about a familiar area or an introduction into a new area. It is available online through the IEEE Xplore Digital Library and the IEEE ComSoc Digital Library.
The publication is currently looking for contributions for all future issues. Topics of interest include all areas of communications and networking, including but not limited to:
Networking and Networking Technology
Telecommunications Switching
Wireless Networks, including Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks
Personal Communications
Radio and Satellite Communications
Lightwave Technologies and Optical Networking
Security, Trust, and Privacy in Networking
Networking in Grids
Peer-to-Peer Networking
Transmission Systems
Coding, Equalization and Modulation for Transmission
Multimedia Services
Coding, Equalization, Detection, and Timing Recovery for Digital Data Storage Channels
Network Management
Residential Networks and Services
Traffic Engineering
Signaling
Performance Modeling
Submission Instructions:
Please submit manuscripts via the ManuscriptCentral website at
http://comst-ieee.manuscriptcentral.com
Please email any questions to the Editor-In-Chief:
Nelson L. S. da Fonseca
State University of Campinas
Institute of Computing
P.O. Box 6176
13084-971 Campinas, SP, Brazil
tel: 55-19-37885878
fax: 55+19+37885847
E-mail: comst [at] ic [dot] unicamp [dot] br (comst [at] ic [dot] unicamp [dot] br)
Marconi Society Seeking Outstanding Young Scholars in ComSoc Community
Nominate a scholar for the prestigious Marconi Young Scholars Award - Submission deadline is 1 May 2011
Founded in 1972, the Marconi Society recognizes the achievements of living scientists in the field of information and communications science. The organization recognizes outstanding young scientists and engineers (age 27 or younger at the time of nomination) who have demonstrated exceptional capabilities and potential.
Young Scholars receive a $4000 cash prize plus $1000 in expenses to attend its annual awards gala September 9, 2011 in San Diego, CA. This is an opportunity for ComSoc's brightest young researchers to gain well-deserved recognition, and meet and network with some of the industry's best-known scientists and engineers.
Visit nomination instructions page to find out how to nominate a candidate.
Nominations must be submitted on behalf of a candidate by a faculty advisor and/or technical manager.
The deadline for submissions is May 1, 2011. If you have questions, please direct them to:
hattihamlin [at] comcast [dot] net (Ms. Hatti Hamlin), Executive Director of the Marconi Society
925.872.4328
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