Robert Metcalfe

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Robert Melancton Metcalfe (born 1946 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American technology pioneer who co-invented Ethernet with David Boggs, founded 3Com and formulated Metcalfe's Law. As of January 2006, he is a general partner of Polaris Venture Partners

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[edit] Biography

Metcalfe graduated from MIT in 1969 with two S.B. degrees, one in Electrical Engineering and the other in management from the MIT Sloan School of Management. He then went to Harvard for graduate school, earning his M.S. in 1970 and his Ph.D. in applied mathematics in 1973, with a thesis on packet switching (which was actually written while working at MIT's Project MAC).

Metcalfe was working at Xerox PARC in 1973 when he invented Ethernet, a standard for connecting computers over short distances. In 1979, Metcalfe departed PARC and founded 3Com, a manufacturer of computer networking equipment. In 1980 he received the Association for Computing Machinery Grace Murray Hopper Award for his contributions to the development of local networks, specifically Ethernet. In 1990 Metcalfe retired from 3Com and began a 10 year stint as a publisher and pundit, writing an Internet column for InfoWorld. He became a venture capitalist in 2001 and is now a General Partner at Polaris Venture Partners. He is a director of Pop!Tech, an executive technology conference he cofounded in 1997.

[edit] Awards

Metcalfe was awarded the IEEE Medal of Honor in 1996 for "exemplary and sustained leadership in the development, standardization, and commercialization of Ethernet."[1]

Metcalfe received the National Medal of Technology from President Bush in a White House ceremony on March 14, 2003, "for leadership in the invention, standardization, and commercialization of Ethernet", having been selected for the honor in 2003.[2] In May 2007, Metcalfe, along with 17 others, will be inducted to the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio, due to his work with Ethernet technology. [3]

[edit] Incorrect predictions

Outside of his technical achievements, Metcalfe is perhaps best known for his 1995 prediction that the internet would suffer a catastrophic collapse the following year; he promised to eat his words if it did not. During his key note speech at the Sixth WWW International 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. [4] [5]. This was after he tried to eat his words in the form of a very large cake, but the audience strongly protested; the cake was quite good [citation needed] and was eaten by some of the audience after the speech.

During an event where he talked about predictions at the Eighth International World Wide Web Conference in 1999, a participant asked: what is the bet?. He stated that there was no bet as he was not ready to eat another column.

Metcalfe is also known for his harsh criticism of open source software, and Linux in particular, predicting that the latter would be obliterated after Microsoft released Windows 2000:

The Open Source Movement's ideology is utopian balderdash [... that] reminds me of communism. [...] Linux [is like] organic software grown in utopia by spiritualists [...] When they bring organic fruit to market, you pay extra for small apples with open sores -- the Open Sores Movement. When [Windows 2000] gets here, goodbye Linux.[6]

[edit] Selected publications

  • "Packet Communication", MIT Project MAC Technical Report MAC TR-114, December, 1973 (a recast version of Metcalfe's Harvard dissertation)

[edit] References

  1. ^ IEEE Medal of Honor Recipients. IEEE (n.d.). Retrieved on 2006-08-19.
  2. ^ Recipients of the National Medal of Technology. United States Technology Administration (2006-07-24). Retrieved on 2006-08-19.
  3. ^ Inventors to be honored on Capitol Hill. Retrieved on 2007-02-08. (currently inaccessible)
  4. ^ Sage who warned of Net's collapse eats his words. Reuters (1997-04-11). Retrieved on 2007-01-12.
  5. ^ Eating My Collapse Column. North American Network Operators Group (1997-04-16). Retrieved on 2007-01-12.
  6. ^ Linux's '60s technology, open-sores ideology won't beat W2K, but what will?. Infoworld (1999-06-21). Retrieved on 2007-01-12.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Awards
Preceded by
Joel S. Engel, Richard H. Frenkiel and William C. Jakes, Jr.		 IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal
1988		 Succeeded by
Gerald R. Ash and Billy B. Oliver
Preceded by
Lotfi Asker Zadeh		 IEEE Medal of Honor
1996		 Succeeded by
George H. Heilmeier
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Metcalfe"
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