David Dana "Dave" Clark (born April 7, 1944) is an American computer scientist and

Internet pioneer Instead of having a single "inventor", the Internet was developed by many people over many years. The following are some Internet pioneers who contributed to its early and ongoing development. These include early theoretical foundations, specifyi ...

who has been involved with

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

developments since the mid-1970s. He currently works as a Senior Research Scientist at

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is a research institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) formed by the 2003 merger of the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) and the Artificial Intelligence Lab ...

(CSAIL).

Education

He graduated from Swarthmore College in 1966. In 1968, he received his

Master's A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice.

and Engineer's degrees in Electrical Engineering from

, where he worked on the I/O architecture of

Multics Multics ("Multiplexed Information and Computing Service") is an influential early time-sharing operating system based on the concept of a single-level memory.Dennis M. Ritchie, "The Evolution of the Unix Time-sharing System", Communications of ...

under Jerry Saltzer. He received his

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

in Electrical Engineering from MIT in 1973.

Career

From 1981 to 1989, he acted as chief protocol architect in the development of the

, and chaired the Internet Activities Board, which later became the

Internet Architecture Board The Internet Architecture Board (IAB) is "a committee of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and an advisory body of the Internet Society (ISOC). Its responsibilities include architectural oversight of IETF activities, Internet Standards ...

. He has also served as chairman of the Computer Sciences and Telecommunications Board of the

National Research Council National Research Council may refer to: * National Research Council (Canada), sponsoring research and development * National Research Council (Italy), scientific and technological research, Rome * National Research Council (United States), part of ...

. In 1990 he was awarded the

SIGCOMM Award The SIGCOMM Award recognizes lifetime contribution to the field of communication networks. The award is presented in the annual SIGCOMM Technical Conference. The awardees have been: * 2022 Henning Schulzrinne * 2021 Hari Balakrishnan * 2020 Ami ...

in recognition of his major contributions to Internet protocol and architecture. Clark received in 1998 the IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal. In 1996, Clark was elected a member of the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of ...

for the design and development of efficient implementation techniques for Internet protocols. In 2001, he was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery. Also in 2001, he was awarded the Telluride Tech Festival Award of Technology in Telluride,

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the wes ...

, and in 2011 the Internet & Society Lifetime Achievement Award from the

Oxford Internet Institute The Oxford Internet Institute (OII) is a multi-disciplinary department of social and computer science dedicated to the study of information, communication, and technology, and is part of the Social Sciences Division of the University of Oxford ...

at the

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to th ...

. His recent research interests include what the architecture of the Internet will look like in the

post-PC era The Post-PC era is a market trend observed during the late 2000s and early 2010s involving a decline in the sales of personal computers (PCs) in favor of post-PC devices; which include mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers as we ...

as well as "extensions to the Internet to support real-time

traffic Traffic comprises pedestrians, vehicles, ridden or herded animals, trains, and other conveyances that use public ways (roads) for travel and transportation. Traffic laws govern and regulate traffic, while rules of the road include traffi ...

, explicit allocation of service, pricing and related economic issues, and policy issues surrounding

local loop In telephony, the local loop (also referred to as the local tail, subscriber line, or in the aggregate as the last mile) is the physical link or circuit that connects from the demarcation point of the customer premises to the edge of the commo ...

employment".

Legacy

Clark has been credited with a popular statement in the computer science realm: In 1999, law professor

Lawrence Lessig Lester Lawrence Lessig III (born June 3, 1961) is an American academic, attorney, and political activist. He is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the former director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard ...

stated that " rough consensus and running code" had broad significance as "a manifesto that will define our generation.' Clark's new ethos of consensus has become a widely used methodology software development today and replaced a more top down approach that existed in the 80s.

Selected publications

* David D. Clark
"An Input/Output Architecture for Virtual Memory Computer Systems"
Ph.D. dissertation, Project MAC Technical Report 117, January 1974 * L. W. McKnight, W. Lehr, David D. Clark (eds.), ''Internet Telephony'', MIT Press, 2001, * David D. Clark
"The Design Philosophy of the DARPA Internet Protocols"
''Computer Communications Review'' 18:4, August 1988, pp. 106–114 * R. Braden, David D. Clark, S. Shenker, and J. Wroclawski
"Developing a Next-Generation Internet Architecture"
ISI white paper, 2000 * David D. Clark, K. Sollins, J. Wroclawski, R. Braden
"Tussle in Cyberspace: Defining Tomorrow’s Internet"
''Proceedings of SIGCOMM 2002'', ACM Press, 2002 * David D. Clark, K. Sollins, J. Wroclawski, and T. Faber
"Addressing Reality: An Architectural Response to Real-World Demands on the Evolving Internet"
''ACM SIGCOMM 2003 Workshops'',

Karlsruhe Karlsruhe ( , , ; South Franconian: ''Kallsruh'') is the third-largest city of the German state (''Land'') of Baden-Württemberg after its capital of Stuttgart and Mannheim, and the 22nd-largest city in the nation, with 308,436 inhabitants. ...

, August 2003

Notes

External links

David D. Clark's official biography

featuring publication list, working papers, biography, etc. * {{DEFAULTSORT:Clark, David D. American computer scientists Internet pioneers Living people 1944 births Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Swarthmore College alumni Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering MIT School of Engineering alumni Multics people Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty