The two that are most widely recognized are Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn, for TCP/IP, but that's just the start of it. There's JCR Licklider, who first imagined a global network of computers. There's Leonard Kleinrock, first ARPANET nod and packet-switching theory. Larry Roberts, who led development of ARPANET. Paul Baran independently invented packet switching. Donald Davies coined the term "packet" and also developed packet switching. Louis Pouzin also worked on TCP/IP. Jon Postel managed the IP standards and address assignments for decades. Ray Tomlinson invented email and the @ sign. Of course, we can't forget Tim Berneres-Lee, to whom we credit the invention of the web (HTTP, HTML, URLS, the first web browser and server).
So, eleven.
The Dream Machine is a history book by M. Mitchell Waldrop that tells the story of JCR Licklider.
Ooh, hadn't heard of him. From Wikipedia, V. Bush is famous for, among other things, creating the NSF, the memex, an analog microfilm precusor to hypertext, and his essay "As We May Think" in 1945. Definitely influential in the creation of our world today!
> There's always some nincompoop who brings that up. Al Gore deserves credit for what he did as a senator and vice president. He helped to pass legislation that enabled the NSFNET backbone to grow and to permit commercial traffic to flow on the government-sponsored backbones in the US. Had he not done that, it's pretty likely that the commercial sector would not have seen an opportunity to create a commercial internet that all of us can enjoy, so he does deserve some credit for what he's done.
Ooh, several of those as well! Sibling comment mentions Radia Perlman. She invented Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) which prevents loops in wiring from taking down networks. (Plug an Ethernet cable into the same switch it comes out of.) This has saved everyone's bacon countless times. Elizabeth Feinler managed hostnames before there was DNS and helped establish several of the top level domains (TLD)s we use today. There's Karen Spärck Jones without whom, search engines wouldn't be what they are today. Judy Estrin helped with TCP/IP, Sally Floyd worked on congestion control algorithms, without which, the Internet would have gotten all choked up and never gotten off the ground. Susan Estrada helped commercialize the Internet, with her work on internet exchanges (IX), and Jean Armour Polly gets credit for coining the phrase "surfing the Internet." but should be better known for pioneering public Internet access and for her work with families and kids getting online.
These women played a critical role in creating the Internet we have today.
So, eleven.
The Dream Machine is a history book by M. Mitchell Waldrop that tells the story of JCR Licklider.