Vinton G. Cerf turns 80 this year and he’s busy as ever. As Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist continues his tireless efforts on behalf of initiatives and organizations that advance the beneficial use of the Internet, he is receiving the Marconi Society’s prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award. Cerf’s work will be celebrated at the organization’s annual Gala on October 27.

Cerf is the first person in the Marconi Society’s nearly 50 year history to receive both the Marconi Prize (1998) and the Lifetime Achievement Award. 

He has been a key figure at the Marconi Society, serving as Board Chair since 2016 and guiding the organization to its current vision of a digitally equitable world.  Cerf has also been involved with a number of initiatives, including the  Paul Baran Young Scholars and the National Broadband Mapping Coalition. Marconi Board Vice Chair John Cioffi said, “On behalf of our board, who unanimously supported this special double award, we really wanted to provide a different and special recognition of Vint as an individual who unselfishly gives his time to numerous efforts and charities, beyond the outstanding technical contributions he’s also made.”

These technical and societal contributions are unparalleled.  “It is no exaggeration to say that Vint’s work on the Internet has created industries, brought opportunities to billions of people, and helped build economies,” said Eric Schmidt, former CEO and executive chairman of Alphabet, Inc. “While Google is fortunate to have Vint, we know that he is really the world’s Internet Evangelist.”

Cerf is best known for his work with Bob Kahn to co-create the Internet Protocol suite, known as Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), the highly flexible technology that allows end-to-end data communications. By anticipating voice, data, video and mobility from the start and relying on an open source, layered model, it has enabled people, networks and devices to interact in novel and unanticipated ways. TCP/IP was adopted as a standard for the U.S. Defense Department in 1982 and operationally in 1983. It soon became the foundational technology used to connect computers and networks across the planet.

“I love to build things that connect people and I enjoy seeing everyone use them,” remarked Cerf. “I favor long term projects where the technology needs to catch up with the aspiration and a broad range of parties needs to come together to achieve a result.”

Cerf has always sought ways to communicate easily and effectively. He engineered MCI Mail in 1983, bringing together companies with different technologies who had not collaborated before, with a vision for a “digital post office” that could connect to other email systems, fax services, and old-fashioned postal mail. In 1988 he requested and received permission from the U.S. government to connect MCI Mail to the Internet, opening a path towards commercialization of the Internet. While key industry players were focused on proprietary networks, Cerf and other Internet creators shared a wider vision built upon open standards.  

“Even in the early days, when the predecessor of what we later came to call the Internet was being developed for military use, Vint understood the power and promise of a network that could connect people to one another around the globe,” noted Former Vice President Al Gore. “Vint’s ambitious prescience was instrumental in opening the door for billions of Internet users and applications.”

This vision spurred Cerf’s long-term engagement with organizations that help the Internet bring value to everyone. In 1992, he co-founded the nonprofit Internet Society (ISOC) to advocate for Internet policy and be the institutional home for core Internet technical standards. He also chaired the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), established to coordinate the domain name system. Over the years he has led numerous other professional organizations, including the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Scientists and Engineers for America, and the Marconi Society. Cerf generously shares his time and connections to create a better and more inclusive world with organizations ranging from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Both the Internet and Cerf himself have had significant impact on the nonprofit sector.  “The Internet enables us to immediately mobilize funding and resources to provide meals to communities affected by humanitarian, climate, and community crises,” said Chef José Andrés, Founder of World Central Kitchen.  “Vint’s innovations are helping save lives every day – and Vint’s compassion and generosity are inspiring and educating future generations of disrupters who will follow in his footsteps.”

At age 13, Cerf started wearing hearing aids and uses them to this day. This has spurred his commitment to communications and connections. He was an active proponent in the campaign to bring captioning to television. He served for 8 years on the Board of Trustees of Gallaudet University. He was the Founding Chairman of the Northern Virginia Resource Center for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. At Google, he is executive sponsor for several Employee Resource Groups aimed at helping people with disabilities. Cerf is an active advocate and supporter for diversity across gender, ability, geography and ethnicity in STEM fields.  

“Vint is so deserving of this award for his technical vision and pioneering breakthroughs, his championing and mentoring of technologists, and his successful advocacy for diversity and inclusion in the engineering profession” said Andrea Goldsmith, Dean of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton University and Marconi Society Board member. 

Cerf continues to embrace the promises and challenges inherent in the future of the Internet. Over the past 25 years, he has helped build the Interplanetary Internet to provide communications for the growing number of people, vehicles and devices in space. He is a founding trustee of the Interspecies Internet, a think tank focused on exploring interspecies communication to uncover non-human intelligence. He has taken on the mission to ensure that digital content is preserved and authenticated over time. Digital accessibility technology and digital equity – particularly for rural areas and indigenous Tribes – are high on his priority list.  

But he’s not even close to the finish line.

“The problem with getting a lifetime achievement award is that everyone thinks you’re done,” said Cerf. “I feel like I’m just getting started. Being part of the beginning of something big has an amazing payoff. Even if I’m not here when it finally happens, knowing that I helped at the start and that my contributions will outlive me gives me a vicarious sense of impacting the future.”

About the Marconi Society

Contact:  Paula Reinman, paula.reinman@marconisociety.org