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Robert Melancton Metcalfe (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.As of August 2006, he is a general partner of Polaris Venture Partners, and as such sits on the boards of directors of some of the companies in which Polaris invests, including Mintera and Narad Networks; he is chairman of another Polaris-funded venture, Ember.••
Biography Metcalfe graduated from MIT in 1969 with two S.B. degrees, one in Electrical Engineering and the other in management from the Sloan School. He then went to Harvard for graduate school, earning his S.M. in 1970 and his Ph.D. in applied mathematics in 1973, with a thesis on packet switching (which was actually written while working at MIT's Project MAC). 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 Pop!Tech, an executive technology conference he cofounded in 1997. Awards 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, 2003, "for leadership in the invention, standardization, and commercialization of Ethernet", having been selected for the honor in 2003.• Selected publications See also | ||||||||
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