Leonard Kleinrock
lorenetworking
The queueing theorist whose early-1960s work on delay in networks of nodes underpinned ARPANET performance analysis, and whose UCLA laboratory hosted the first node.
His mathematics is what lets anyone reason about waiting: how long a queue grows, what delay a given load produces, and why a link at ninety per cent utilisation behaves nothing like one at fifty. Every capacity conversation is downstream of it. His claim to have originated packet switching is disputed - by Baran, by Davies and by historians who note that the early reports address queueing and delay rather than message blocks - and the honest record keeps the dispute rather than resolving it in either direction.
Also known as: kleinrock, queueing theory