The Internet Society on Monday released a list of inductees who make up the first class in a new Internet Hall of Fame that celebrates the Net's early geniuses, game-changers, and various people who helped to fund, evangelize, and incubate the global information network used by billions.
The society breaks out inductees into three categories, Pioneers, Innovators, and Global Connectors. The first category is dominated by the creators of Arpanet and familiar names like Vinton Cerf, Robert Kahn, and Leonard Kleinrock. Among the innovators who were instrumental in the transition from the text-only Net to the World Wide Web are Mitchell Baker, Tim Berners-Lee, Craig Newmark, Ray Tomlinson, and Linus Torvalds, while Al Gore, Nancy Hafkin, and Toru Takahashi are listed as connectors.
Here's the full list of the Internet Society's 2012 inductees, with brief biographical details (check out Wired's more comprehensive rundown of these Internet rock stars here):
PIONEERS
Vinton Cerf: Co-inventor of the TCP/IP protocol
Danny Cohen: Creator of a real-time flight simulator for Arpanet
Steve Crocker: Developer of standards for the early Internet
Donald W. Davies: Co-inventor of packet-switched networking
Elizabeth "Jake" Feinler: Head of the Network Information Systems Center, led group that developed top-level domain system
Charles Herzfeld: DARPA director who oversaw creation of Internet predecessor Arpanet
Robert E. Kahn: Co-inventor of the TCP/IP protocol
Peter Kirstein: Networking guru, colleague of Vinton Cerf
Leonard Kleinrock: Developer of packet-switching, hierarchical network routing
John Klensin: Co-developer of DNS and SMTP protocols
Jon Postel: Creator of Internet protocols, ran Internet naming system
Louis Pouzin: Inventor of datagrams, laid groundwork for TCP/IP protocol
Lawrence Roberts: Arpanet programming manager and designer, developer of data packets
INNOVATORS
Winifred Mitchell Baker: Chair of the Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation
Tim Berners-Lee: Inventor of the World Wide Web, Web servers, Web browsers, HTTP, and HTML
Robert Caillau: Co-founder with Berners-Lee of the World Wide Web, developed first Web browser for Apple's Mac computers
Van Jacobson: Created TCP flow control algorithm that enabled the Net to scale
Lawrence H. Landweber: Built Arpanet alternative CSNET for 180 universities around the world
Paul Mockapetris: Developed the Internet's distributed and dynamic Domain Name System
Craig Newmark: Founder of Craigslist
Ray Tomlinson: Inventor of Arpanet's first email system
Linus Torvalds: Developer of the free and open-source Linux kernel
Phil Zimmerman: Privacy and security advocate, developer of email encryption system, Pretty Good Privacy
GLOBAL CONNECTORS
Randy Bush: Founder of the Network Startup Resource Center (NSRC)
Kilnam Chon: Internet evangelist who fostered Internet development in Asia
Al Gore: Former U.S. vice president and senator who championed the funding and development of the Internet in Congress
Nancy Hafkin: United Nations Economic Commission representative in Africa who promoted computing and the Internet throughout the continent
Geoff Huston: Father of Australia's Internet
Brewster Kahle: Creator of the Internet Archive
Daniel Karrenberg: Founder the RIPE Network Coordination Center, the first Regional Internet Registry
Toru Takahashi: Journalist and evangelist for the development of the Internet in Japan
Tan Tin Wee: Founder of the multilingual Internet domain name system
For more from Damon, follow him on Twitter @dpoeter.
