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.

Vinton Cerf was born in 1943 in Connecticut, USA, graduated in Mathematics at the University of Stanford, and earned a PhD in Computer Sciences at California University. Together with Robert Kahn he designed the TCP/IP computer protocols to link computers regardless of their type of connection -radio stations, satellites and telephone lines- for the military´s ARPANET. He designed MCI MAIL, the first Internet-linked e-mail service, between 1982 and 1986. His most recent work includes an interplanetary Internet project, called InterPlanetNet for short. At present he is vice president of Internet Architecture and Technology at Worldcom Corporation.