Paul Baran, a founding father of the Internet and a Drexel University alumnus, has been named a 2007 National Medal of Technology and Innovation laureate.
 President Bush presented the award to Baran on Monday, Sept. 29, in the East Room of the White House.
The award honors America's leading innovators and is presented to individuals, teams and companies for their contributions to the nation's economic, environmental and social well-being.
“On behalf of the entire Drexel University community, I congratulate Paul Baran for his remarkable achievements,” Drexel President Constantine Papadakis said. “One of the Internet's premier architects, he helped revolutionize the way we communicate, conduct business, teach and learn and so much more. He is one of Drexel's most accomplished alumni, and he has made us all proud.”
 A native of Poland who graduated from Drexel with a bachelor of science in electrical engineering in 1949 and received an honorary degree in 1997, Baran is credited with helping to develop packet-switching technology in 1962. Packet-switching enables information to be divided into small packets that are addressed, sent to several destinations to increase the odds the information will actually arrive and, finally, reassembled. Packet-switching laid the foundation for the Internet to develop.
While working at RAND Corp., Baran conceived of packet-switching as a military communications system to be used in the event of nuclear attack during the Cold War. A series of papers outlining the key concepts of packet-switching published in 1964, “On Distributed Communications” influenced the work of Lawrence Roberts and Leonard Kleinrock, a 2007 National Medal of Science laureate. Roberts and Kleinrock utilized packet-switching in the development of the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, or ARPANET, the world's first operational packet-switching network and predecessor of the Internet. 
Baran, an Atherton, Calif., resident who received the 2001 Franklin Institute Bower Award for Achievement in Science for his contributions to the Internet, is credited with helping to develop a packet voice technology that led to the development of the first commercial ATM product. He is also credited with helping to develop discrete multitone modem technology, used in DSL modems, and doorway metal detectors.
Another Drexel alumnus, N. Joseph Woodland, is a National Medal of Technology and Innovation laureate for his conception and development of Universal Product Code technology. Woodland, who graduated with a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering in 1947 and received a Drexel honorary degree in 1998, was presented the award in 1992.
|
A Founding Father of the Internet, Drexel Alumnus Paul Baran
Named National Medal of Technology and Innovation Laureate
