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Vinton Gray Cerf (; born June 23, 1943) is an American Internet pioneer and is recognized as one of "the fathers of the Internet", sharing this title with TCP/IP co-developer Robert Kahn.

He has received honorary degrees and awards that include the National Medal of Technology, the Turing Award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Marconi Prize, and membership in the National Academy of Engineering.

Life and career

Vinton Gray Cerf was born in New Haven, Connecticut, on June 23, 1943, the son of Muriel (née Gray) and Vinton Thruston Cerf. His mother was born in Canada and was of British, Irish, and French Canadian descent. His paternal ancestors emigrated from Alsace–Lorraine to Kentucky. Cerf attended Van Nuys High School with Steve Crocker and Jon Postel. While in high school, Cerf worked at Rocketdyne on the Apollo program for six months and helped write statistical analysis software for the non-destructive tests of the F-1 engines.

Cerf received a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from Stanford University. After college, Cerf worked at IBM as a systems engineer supporting QUIKTRAN for two years.

Cerf and his wife Sigrid both have hearing deficiencies; they met at a hearing aid agent's practice in the 1960s, leading him to advocate for accessibility. They had two sons, David and Bennett.

He left IBM to attend graduate school at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he earned his M.S. degree in 1970 and his PhD in 1972. Cerf studied under Professor Gerald Estrin and worked in Professor Leonard Kleinrock's data packet networking group that connected the first two nodes of the ARPANET, the first node on the Internet, and "contributed to a host-to-host protocol" for the ARPANET.

While at UCLA, Cerf met Bob Kahn, who was working on the ARPANET system architecture. Cerf chaired the International Network Working Group. He wrote the first TCP with Yogen Dalal and Carl Sunshine, called Specification of Internet Transmission Control Program (RFC 675), published in December 1974.

Awards and honors

Cerf has received a number of honorary degrees, including doctorates, from the University of the Balearic Islands, ETHZ in Zurich, Switzerland, Capitol College, Gettysburg College, Yale University, George Mason University, Marymount University, Bethany College (Kansas), University of Pisa, University of Rovira and Virgili (Tarragona, Spain), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Luleå University of Technology (Sweden), University of Twente (Netherlands), Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Tsinghua University (Beijing), Brooklyn Polytechnic, UPCT (University of Cartagena, Spain), Zaragoza University (Spain), University of Reading (United Kingdom), Royal Roads University (Canada), MGIMO (Moscow State University of International Relations), Buenos Aires Institute of Technology (Argentina), Polytechnic University of Madrid, Keio University (Japan), University of South Australia (Australia), University of St Andrews (Scotland), University of Pittsburgh and Gallaudet University (United States). Other awards include:

• Edward A. Dickson Alumnus of the Year Award from UCLA
• Prince of Asturias award for science and technology
• Life Member IEEE

Fellow of the IEEE for contribution and leadership in the design, development, and application of internet protocols.

Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, 1994

Elected as a member into the National Academy of Engineering in 1995 for contributions to the design and development of network protocols and leadership in the evolution of the Internet.

Yuri Rubinsky Memorial Award, 1996

SIGCOMM Award for "contributions to the Internet [spanning] more than 25 years, from development of the fundamental TCP/IP protocols".

Certificate of Merit from The Franklin Institute, in 1996.

Partial bibliography

Co-author

Cerf writes under the column name "CERF'S UP", and Cerf's car has a vanity plate (registration) "CERFSUP".