18 Facts About Paul Baran

Paul Baran was one of the two independent inventors of packet switching, which is today the dominant basis for data communications in computer networks worldwide, and went on to start several companies and develop other technologies that are an essential part of modern digital communication.

Paul Baran was the youngest of three children in his Lithuanian Jewish family, with the Yiddish given name "Pesach".

Paul Baran's family moved to the United States on May 11,1928, settling in Boston and later in Philadelphia, where his father, Morris "Moshe" Baran, opened a grocery store.

Paul Baran graduated from Drexel University in 1949, with a degree in electrical engineering.

Paul Baran then joined the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Company, where he did technical work on UNIVAC models, the first brand of commercial computers in the United States.

Paul Baran obtained his master's degree in engineering from UCLA in 1959, with advisor Gerald Estrin while he took night classes.

Paul Baran's insight gained from the simulation was that redundancy was the key.

The Distributed Network that Paul Baran introduced was intended to route around damage.

Paul Baran applied the concept to a general-purpose computer network.

Paul Baran was happy to acknowledge that Davies had come up with the same idea as him independently.

In 1968, Paul Baran was a founder of the Institute for the Future and was then involved in other networking technologies developed in Silicon Valley.

Paul Baran wrote on the subject of computer systems and privacy.

Paul Baran participated in a review of the NBS proposal for a Data Encryption Standard in 1976, along with Martin Hellman and Whitfield Diffie of Stanford University.

Paul Baran founded Telebit after conceiving its discrete multitone modem technology in the mid-1980s.

In 1985, Paul Baran founded Metricom, the first wireless Internet company, which deployed Ricochet, the first public wireless mesh networking system.

Paul Baran extended his work in packet switching to wireless-spectrum theory, developing what he called "kindergarten rules" for the use of wireless spectrum.

Paul Baran received an honorary doctorate when he gave the commencement speech at Drexel in 1997.

Paul Baran died in Palo Alto, California, at the age of 84 on March 26,2011 from complications caused by lung cancer.