Paul Baran

Paul Baran received a B.S.in electrical engineering from Drexel University in 1949. He then joined the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Company where he was a technician on the Univac 1 computer. In 1959, Baran received an M.S. degree in engineering from UCLA and joined the Rand Corporation, where he developed the concept of packet switching to make distributed networks feasible. His packet switching ideas served as a foundation upon which others later built the ARPANET, which, over time, evolved into the early Internet. Baran left Rand in 1968 to co-found the Institute for the Future, a not-for-profit research group specializing in long-range forecasting. In 1986, he co-founded Metricom and Ricochet wireless and in 1989, InterFax. Later, he co-founded Com21 in 1995 and then co-founded GoBackTV in 2003. Paul Baran is a Computer History Museum Fellow Awards recipient from the class of 2005 and has authored over 150 papers and 40 patents. Among his other awards are the IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal in 1990 for his work on packet switching, and the Franklin Institute’s Bower Award and Prize in Science in 2001.