Dr. Martín Abadi
Robert Metcalfe MEMBERS
Professor of Innovation & Entrepreneurship, University of Texas at Austin
New York, New York, United States
More Info
  • 2004
  • Computer Science and Information Technology (C.S.E)
More Info
  • 2004
  • Computer Science and Information Technology (C.S.E)
Election Remark
Robert "Bob" Melancton Metcalfe (born April 7, 1946) is an American engineer and entrepreneur who contributed to the development of the internet in the 1970s.

He co-invented Ethernet, co-founded 3Com, and formulated Metcalfe's law, which describes the effect of a telecommunications network.

Metcalfe has also made several predictions which failed to come to pass, including forecasting the demise of the internet during the 1990s.
 
He later recalled that Ethernet was born on May 22, 1973, the day he circulated a memo titled "Alto Ethernet".

In 1979, Metcalfe co-founded 3Com, a manufacturer of computer networking equipment, in his Palo Alto apartment. 3Com became a leading provider of networking solutions, and Ethernet became the dominant networking standard for local area networks (LANs).

In 1980 he received the ACM Grace Hopper Award for his contributions to the development of local networks, specifically Ethernet.

In 1990, the 3Com board of directors appointed Éric Benhamou as CEO instead of Metcalfe, who then left the company.

He spent 10 years as a publisher and pundit, writing an internet column for InfoWorld.

In 1996, he co-founded Pop!Tech, an executive technology conference.

He became a venture capitalist in 2001 and subsequently a general partner at Polaris Venture Partners.
 
In June 2022, Metcalfe returned to MIT by joining the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory as a research affiliate and computational engineer, working with the MIT Julia Lab.

In 1996, Metcalfe was awarded the IEEE Medal of Honor for "exemplary and sustained leadership in the development, standardization, and commercialization of Ethernet." The following year, he was elected as a member into the National Academy of Engineering for the development of Ethernet. He received the National Medal of Technology in 2003 "for leadership in the invention, standardization, and commercialization of Ethernet".

In October 2003, he received the Marconi Award for "For inventing the Ethernet and promulgating his Law of network utility based on the square of the nodes".

In 2004, he was elected as member of the European Academy of Engineering.

Metcalfe was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2007, for his work with Ethernet technology.

In 2008, he received the Fellow Award from the Computer History Museum "for fundamental contributions to the invention, standardization, and commercialization of Ethernet."
 
In March 2023, Metcalfe was awarded the 2022 Association for Computing Machinery's Turing Award for his contributions to the invention of Ethernet technology.