“Ethernet is the Answer? What Is the Question?”
Robert Metcalfe, Ph.D.
General Parther, Polaris Venture Partners
Co-Inventor, Ethernet
Ninth Annual Lynford Lecture
Remarks by Jeffrey H. Lynford
December 7, 2006
President Hultin, Councilmember Yassky, fellow trustees, faculty, and students:
IMAS is the home of two of Polytechnic's most illustrious professors: Gregory and David Chudnovsky. They are world-class number theorists who are members of the Poly faculty. We
are very proud that they are part of Poly's educational community. They have been responsible
for inviting our eight previous speakers, among whom have been included important theorists and
practitioners in mathematics, computer engineering and the applied sciences. For example:
• Professor Edward Witten, noted string theorist and recipient of the 1990 Fields Medal
• Professor J. Craig Venter, pioneer in the decoding of the human genome
• Professor Robert Mundell, 1999 Nobel Laureate in Economics
• Dr. Richard Garwin, nuclear disarmament expert, recipient of both the 1996 Enrico
Fermi Award and the 2003 National Medal of Science
This afternoon we have with us Dr. Robert Metcalfe, a technology pioneer who co-invented the Ethernet and formulated Metcalfe's Law. Metcalfe's Law proposes that "the value of a network increases exponentially with the number of nodes." More on this later.
Robert was born in Brooklyn in 1946, and like many of you, he was the first person in his family to go to college. At the tender age of 10, he wrote a fourth grade book report that concluded with a hope to one day attend MIT and become an electrical engineer. Ultimately, he graduated from both MIT and Harvard, where he earned degrees in electrical engineering and applied mathematics.
In 1973 he wrote his Ph.D. thesis on "packet switching" and then moved to California where his first job was with the Xerox Corporation. There he initiated his groundbreaking work on the Ethernet, which became a standard for connecting computer networks over short distances. Eventually this technology would be used to connect more than 50 million PCs worldwide. Coincidentally, while he resided in and around Silicon Valley, he became friends with Alan Kay, who was our fourth Lynford Lecturer in 2001.
In 1979 Dr. Metcalfe established 3Com, which stood for computer, communication and compatibility. This firm was to become a major manufacturer of computer networking equipment and today, as a public company, has a market capitalization in excess of$1.8 billion.
In 1990 Dr. Metcalfe retired from 3Com and today he is a General Partner of Polaris Venture Partners, a private investment firm which provides seed capital for newly emerging technologies. In 1992 his alma mater, MIT, elected him to its Board of Directors. In 1997 he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.
In 2003 Dr. Metcalfe accepted The National Medal of Technology from President Bush at a White House ceremony, for his "leadership in the invention, standardization and commercialization of the Ethernet." This is our nation's highest honor for technical innovation.
Finally, on Friday, November 24th, 2006, Dr. Metcalfe obtained another form of recognition, or some
may say, immortality. How many of you in the audience are familiar with the CBS television series entitled, "Numb3rs?" This is a program based on the premise that a young college professor with a Ph.D. in number theory can assist the FBI to solve crimes by applying mathematical formulae to real time events.
On the show broadcast the day after this past Thanksgiving, Metcalfe's Law was utilized by the
protagonist to help stop a series of political assassinations. A little bit of poetic license, to say the least, but an example how Dr. Metcalfe's work has passed into the public domain. The applications of Metcalfe's Law, aside from television drama, are many. It can be applied to telephones, faxes, operating systems, genome sequencing, navies and armies (think netcentric warfare), looking for intelligent life in the universe, and even social networking websites.
In conclusion, Dr. Metcalfe, during an interview, once stated:
"I am an engineer and I think everyone should be engineers. I have a feeling that there are probably other life choices that are as valid as that. But other people should advocate those. I will advocate science and technology, particularly engineering, engineering being slightly different than being a scientist in the grand scheme of things. So I recommend it. It 's a great life. Solving problems. Developing mastery over subjects."
Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you Dr. Robert Metcalfe.