Danny Cohen (December 9, 1937 – August 12, 2019) was an Israeli-American computer scientist specializing in

computer network A computer network is a collection of communicating computers and other devices, such as printers and smart phones. In order to communicate, the computers and devices must be connected by wired media like copper cables, optical fibers, or b ...

ing. He was involved in the

ARPAnet The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control and one of the first computer networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite. Both technologies became the tec ...

project and helped develop various fundamental applications for the

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

. He was one of the key figures behind the separation of TCP and IP (early versions of TCP did not have a separate IP layer); this allowed the later creation of UDP.''Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet'', by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon, 1996, Simon & Schuster, , pg. 236 Cohen is probably now best known for his 1980 paper "On Holy Wars and a Plea for Peace" Also published at '' IEEE Computer''
October 1981 issue
which adopted the terminology of

endianness file:Gullivers_travels.jpg, ''Gulliver's Travels'' by Jonathan Swift, the novel from which the term was coined In computing, endianness is the order in which bytes within a word (data type), word of digital data are transmitted over a data comm ...

for computing (a term borrowed from

Jonathan Swift Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish writer, essayist, satirist, and Anglican cleric. In 1713, he became the Dean (Christianity), dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, and was given the sobriquet "Dean Swi ...

's ''

Gulliver's Travels ''Gulliver's Travels'', originally titled ''Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships'', is a 1726 prose satire by the Anglo-Irish writer and clerg ...

''). Cohen served on the computer science faculty at several universities and worked in private industry.

Biography

Cohen earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics at the

Technion – Israel Institute of Technology The Technion – Israel Institute of Technology is a public university, public research university located in Haifa, Israel. Established in 1912 by Jews under the dominion of the Ottoman Empire, the Technion is the oldest university in the coun ...

in 1963. He was a graduate student in the math department at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

(MIT) from 1965 to 1967. In 1967, Cohen developed the first real-time visual flight simulator on a general purpose computer and the first real-time radar simulator. Cohen's flight simulation work led to the development of the Cohen-Sutherland computer graphics line clipping algorithms, created with Ivan Sutherland at

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

.''Principles of Interactive Computer Graphics'' p.124 and p.252, by Bob Sproull and William M. Newman, 1973, McGraw-Hill Education, International edition, He received a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1969 as a student of Sutherland. His thesis was titled: "Incremental Methods for Computer Graphics". After serving on the computer science faculty at Harvard through 1973, and at California Institute of Technology in 1976, Cohen joined the Information Sciences Institute at the

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in ...

to work on a packet-voice project designed to allow interactive, real-time speech over the

ARPANet The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control and one of the first computer networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite. Both technologies became the tec ...

(and the

during its early development). The Network Voice Protocol project was a forerunner of

Voice over Internet Protocol Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also known as IP telephony, is a set of technologies used primarily for voice communication sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. VoIP enables Voice call, voice calls to be tran ...

(VoIP). In 1981, he adapted the visual simulator to run over the ARPANet which was an early application of packet switching networks to real-time applications. He started the MOSIS project in 1980. In 1993, he worked on

Distributed Interactive Simulation Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS) is an IEEE standard for conducting real-time platform-level wargaming across multiple host computers and is used worldwide, especially by military organizations but also by other agencies such as those inv ...

through several projects funded by the

United States Department of Defense The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD, or DOD) is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government charged with coordinating and superv ...

(DoD). He prototyped a

local area network A local area network (LAN) is a computer network that interconnects computers within a limited area such as a residence, campus, or building, and has its network equipment and interconnects locally managed. LANs facilitate the distribution of da ...

technology called ATOMIC, which was the forerunner of Myrinet. In 1994, Cohen co-founded Myricom (with Chuck Seitz, and others) which commercialized Myrinet. Cohen also started the FastXchange project for

electronic commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) refers to Commerce, commercial activities including the electronic buying or selling Goods and services, products and services which are conducted on online platforms or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on tec ...

and a digital library. Cohen served on several panels and boards for the US DoD,

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in 1887 and is part of the United States Department of Health and Human Service ...

, and United States National Research Council, including 5 years on the USAF Scientific Advisory Board. He served as both a factual and expert witness in patent infringement legal cases about VoIP. Cohen was a commercial pilot with SEL/MEL/SES and Instrument ratings. In 1993 Cohen received the Meritorious Civilian Service Award from the

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Air force, air service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is one of the six United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Tracing its ori ...

. He was a member of the

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

(2006) and an IEEE Fellow (2010). Since 2001, Cohen was a distinguished engineer for

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...

working on very fast communication over short distances, using optical and electrical signaling, in Sun's chief technical officer organization. Cohen continued as an adjunct professor of computer science at USC. In 2012, Cohen was inducted into the

Internet Hall of Fame The Internet Hall of Fame is an honorary lifetime achievement award administered by the Internet Society (ISOC) in recognition of individuals who have made significant contributions to the development and advancement of the Internet. Overview ...

by the

Internet Society The Internet Society (ISOC) is an American non-profit advocacy organization founded in 1992 with local chapters around the world. It has offices in Reston, Virginia, United States, and Geneva, Switzerland. Organization The Internet Society ...

. In 2013 Vint Cerf hosted an event at

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

honoring Cohen. Danny Cohen died in

Palo Alto, California Palo Alto ( ; Spanish language, Spanish for ) is a charter city in northwestern Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a Sequoia sempervirens, coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. Th ...

on August 12, 2019, at the age of 81.

Selected publications

* — also published in '' IEEE Computer''
October 1981 issue
* "AI as the Ultimate Enhancer of Protocol design" (with J. Finnegan), ''Artificial Intelligence and Software Engineering'', Ed. Derek Partridge, ABLEX Publishing Corporation, Norwood, NJ. , 1991, Chapter 22, pp. 463–472, and also in the Proceedings of the Third Annual Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Computer Technology Conference, Long Beach, CA, April 1987, pp. 329–337. Available online a

* "Protocols for Dating Coordination" (with Y. Yemini), Proceedings of the Fourth Berkeley Conference on Distributed Data Management and Computer Networks, San Francisco, CA, August 1979, pp. 179–188. * "Incremental Methods for Computer Graphics" (PhD Thesis), Harvard Report ESD-TR-69-193, April 1969. Available from DTIC (AD #AD694550/U). * "On Linear Differences Curves", published as a chapter in the book ''Advanced Computer Graphics, Economics, Techniques and Applications'', edited by Parslow and Green, Pleunum Press, London 1971, and also in Proceedings of the Computer Graphics '70 Conference, Brunel University, England, April 1970. * "RFC 0741: Specifications for the Network Voice Protocol (NVP)", Nov-22-1977. * "A VLSI Approach to Computational Complexity" by Professor J. Finnegan, in ''VLSI, Systems and Computation'', edited by H. T. Kung, Bob Sproull, and Guy L. Steele Jr., Computer Science Press, 1981, pp. 124–125. * "A Voice Message System", in Computer Message Systems edited by R. P. Uhlig, North-Holland 1981, pp. 17–28. * "The ISO Reference Model and Other Protocol Architectures" (with J. B. Postel), in

International Federation for Information Processing The International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) is a global organisation for researchers and professionals working in the field of computing to conduct research, develop standards and promote information sharing. Established in 19 ...

1983, Paris, September 1983, pp. 29–34. * "MOSIS: Present and Future" (with G. Lewicki, P. Losleben, and D. Trotter) 1984 Conference on Advanced Research in VLSI,

, January 1984, pp. 124–128. * "A Mathematical Approach to Computational Network Design", Chapter 1 in ''Systolic Signal Processing Systems'' (E. E. Swartzlander, ed.), Marcel Dekker, 1987, pp. 1–29. * "Computerized Commerce",

1989, San Francisco, August 1989, pp. 1095–1100. * "Myrinet: A Gigabit-per-Second Local Area Network" (with Boden, Felderman, Kulawik, Seitz, Seizovic, and Su), IEEE-MICRO, February 1995, pp. 29–36. * "RFC 1807: A Format for Bibliographic Records" (with R. Lasher), IETF, June 1995. * "The Internet of Things" (with N. Gershenfeld and R. Krikorian), ''Scientific American'', October 2004, pp. 76–81. * "Internet-0: Interdevice Internetworking" (with N. Gershenfeld), ''IEEE Circuits and Devices Magazine'', September/October 2006, Vol:22, Issue:5, pp. 48–55 * "The world according to Professor James A Finnegan" A collection of entertaining essays about computers, life, the universe, and everything else. By Danny Cohen. Edited by Ron Ho. April 2014, ISBN 978-1495220852

Patents

US Patent 7,573,720 (2009) Active socket for facilitating proximity communication

US Patent 7,561,584 (2009) Implementation of a graph property in a switching fabric for fast networking

US Patent 7,525,199 (2009) Packaging for proximity communication positioned integrated circuits

US Patent 7,460,035 (2008) Balanced code with opportunistically reduced transitions

US Patent 3,769,442 (1973) Compressed Data Base for Radar Land Mass Simulator

References

External links

*
Sun Microsystems Bolsters Top Technical Roster and Recognizes New Member of the National Academy of Engineering
2006 *
''Smart Computing'' Reference Series
, Encyclopedia May 2002, Volume 6, Issue 5 {{DEFAULTSORT:Cohen, Danny 1937 births 2019 deaths American computer scientists California Institute of Technology alumni American commercial aviators Fellows of the IEEE Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Internet pioneers Israeli emigrants to the United States Israeli Jews Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering People from Haifa Technion – Israel Institute of Technology alumni