Leonard Kleinrock
loreThe 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
Sources
- Heidelberg Laureate Foundation - packet switching and the first ARPANET message
- National Academies memorial tribute to Paul Baran, on the RAND studies and the parallel work at NPL
- Kleinrock's own UCLA bibliography of public reports, listing 'Information Flow in Large Communication Nets' as an MIT Ph.D. thesis proposal of May 1961 and an MIT RLE Quarterly Progress Report of July 1961