Internet has completely revolutionised information transfer processes, and has ushered in unrestricted, worldwide information flow. The momentous research and development programme behind it has been led by a range of researchers and research teams who have applied their great vision of the future to turn what years ago was Utopia into a tangible reality by designing and setting up the protocols, the technology needed for link-up, and the access services to bring all this about. The work of Lawrence Roberts, Robert Kahn, Vinton Cerf and Tim Berners-Lee is in this sense a major step forward for the benefit of mankind.

Robert Kahn was born in 1938 in New York, is the joint inventor of the TCP/IP protocols, and was responsible for setting up the Defence Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) Internet programme. He also developed the concept of a digital object infrastructure as a middleware component for the National Information Infrastructure, providing a framework for the interoperability of heterogeneous computer systems. At present he leads the Corporation for National Research Initiatives. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and of the assessment committee on information technologies for the President of the United States.