This year's A.M. Turing Award (the computing equivalent to the Nobel Prize) goes to Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn. As young pups in the early 70's, Cerf and Kahn developed TCP/IP - the underlying communications protocal upon which the Internet was built.
A few years ago, I spent a great deal of time coming up to speed on TCP/IP - not in the sense of actually making the protocols work. I'm not brainy enough for that. Instead I wanted to try to understand how they worked. I just loved working my way through that stuff. It was a total blast.
I also have a huge soft spot for Alan Turing for whom the award is named - he's one of my heros. Turing was one of the giants of the 20th century. However, very few folks outside the technical arena know of him. He was brilliant mathematician who cracked the German's Enigma code in WWII. He also is considered to be the founder of computer science. He designed one of the earliest digital computers. He is also the creator of the very famous Turing Machine.
Turing was also a world class long distance runner and was also gay. He committed suicide in the mid '50's. He was under investigation by British Police for a homosexual affair. His end was just tragic and wrong. A legitimate war hero and one the brilliant minds of the 20th century persecuted because he was gay.
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