Vinton Cerf Ph.D.

National Medal of Technology and Innovation 1997

One of two Fathers of the Internet. TCP/IP protocols. Internet Architecture. Chief Internet Evangelist, Google. Interplanetary Internet. Living Legend.

"Brilliant, indescribably enthusiastic, humorous, happy, treats people extremely well. It would be nice to go to work every day and work with people like Vint Cerf." – R.V. Nagaveni, Founder, Ganga Library.

Defining Moment/Regret

Vinton Cerf interviewed by Laura Hambleton, The Washington Post, July 28, 2014

Laura Hambleton, "Looking back, what do you regret?"

Vinton Cerf, "Inside every 71-year-old is a 17-year-old wondering what happened.

"One [regret] is stopping cello lessons when I got completely mesmerized by computers. I really regret that now. It’s such a magnificent instrument.

"When I was 15, and I had been studying cello for a few years, five or six, I was taken to a master's class with Pablo Casals at UC-Berkeley. I still have his autograph. It was that same year that my father took me to see a system called SAGE, which stood for semi-automated ground environment, a tube-based computer that was used for radar tracking to detect Russian bombers coming from the North Pole.

"I was completely fascinated that you could make computers do things like this. I diverted off into computers. By 1960, I pretty much abandoned the cello in favor of a computer keyboard.

"I envy the ones who didn’t give it up. The ability to produce music has got to be more satisfying than producing good code. When you play in a group, there is something really intense, special and intimate about producing music".