Robert Metcalfe

Robert Metcalfe, Ph.D. (born 1946 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American technology pioneer who co-invented Ethernet with David Boggs, founded 3Com and formulated Metcalfe's Law.

Metcalfe was working at Xerox PARC in 1973 when he invented Ethernet, a standard for connecting computers over short distances. In 1979, Metcalfe departed PARC and founded 3Com, a manufacturer of computer networking equipment. In 1980 he received the Association for Computing Machinery Grace Murray Hopper Award for his contributions to the development of local networks, specifically Ethernet. In 1990 Metcalfe retired from 3Com and began a 10 year stint as a publisher and pundit, writing an Internet column for InfoWorld. He became a venture capitalist in 2001 and is now a General Partner at Polaris Venture Partners. He is a director of PopTech, an executive technology conference he cofounded in 1997.

He graduated from MIT in 1969 with two S.B. degrees, one in EECS and another from the MIT Sloan School of Management. He then went to Harvard for graduate school, earning his S.M. in 1970 and his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the Division of Engineering and Applied Physics (now DEAS) in 1973, with a thesis on packet switching (which was actually written while working at MIT's Project MAC).

Metcalfe was awarded the IEEE Medal of Honor in 1996 for "exemplary and sustained leadership in the development, standardization, and commercialization of Ethernet."

Metcalfe received the National Medal of Technology from President Bush in a White House ceremony on March 14, 2005, "for leadership in the invention, standardization, and commercialization of Ethernet."

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