Paul Baran
Consultant for the ARPANET project
- After his arrival in the USA he lived in Boston with his family and later moved to Philadelphia where his father had a grocery store.
- Baran was a consultant for the ARPANET project
- His work "On Distributed Communication" published in 1964 is considered to be a foundation stone for the development of the internet.
- Baran presented the concept of transmitting information via packet switching technology (distributed adaptive message block switching) across a highly interconnected network.
- When Larry Roberts picked up the work of ARPANET, he heard about Baran’s idea and eventually adopted his basic approach.
- At the same time Donald Watts Davies independently dealt with packet switching in England.
- During the time at RAND he dealt with the reliability of the North American telephone network.
- Drexel University was famous (and proud) for mercilessly screening their students and letting them fail if they didn’t give maximum performance in math.
- He decided against a promotion at UCLA, when he couldn’t find a parking space on the campus.
Paul Baran
born in 1926 in Poland
Studied at Drexel University in Philadelphia and at UCLA
Rand Corporation, Com21
