Lester Donald Earnest (December 17, 1930 – August 27, 2024) was an American

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

Life and career

After receiving his B.S. in

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

from the

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small group of institutes ...

(Caltech) in 1953, he began his career as a

computer programmer A programmer, computer programmer or coder is an author of computer source code someone with skill in computer programming. The professional titles ''software developer'' and ''software engineer'' are used for jobs that require a progr ...

in 1954 during a stint as a U.S. Navy Aviation Electronics Officer & Digital Computer Project Officer at the

Naval Air Development Center Naval Air Warfare Center Warminster was a U.S. Navy military installation located in Warminster, Pennsylvania, Warminster, Pennsylvania and Ivyland, Pennsylvania, Ivyland, Pennsylvania. For most of its existence (1949–1993), the base was kn ...

(NADC) in Johnsville, Pennsylvania.Biography of Les Earnest
In 1956, he joined 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)'s

Lincoln Laboratory The MIT Lincoln Laboratory, located in Lexington, Massachusetts, is a United States Department of Defense federally funded research and development center chartered to apply advanced technology to problems of national security. Research and dev ...

to help design the

Semi-Automatic Ground Environment The Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) was a system of mainframe computer, large computers and associated computer network, networking equipment that coordinated data from many radar sites and processed it to produce a single unified image ...

(SAGE) air defense system. In 1959, the focus of his career shifted to innovations within the field of word processing. During this time, he was responsible for developing the "first pen-based computer system that reliably recognized cursive writing"Testimony on Software Patents by Les Earnest
/ref> and the first spell checker. From 1959 to 1965, he was a subdepartment head at the

MITRE Corporation The Mitre Corporation (stylized as The MITRE Corporation and MITRE) is an American not-for-profit organization with dual headquarters in Bedford, Massachusetts, and McLean, Virginia. It manages federally funded research and development centers ...

Bedford, Massachusetts Bedford is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population of Bedford was 14,161 at th2022 United States census History ''The following compilation comes from Ellen Abrams (1999) based on information from Abram Engl ...

and

Arlington, Virginia Arlington County, or simply Arlington, is a County (United States), county in the U.S. state of Virginia. The county is located in Northern Virginia on the southwestern bank of the Potomac River directly across from Washington, D.C., the nati ...

. While at MITRE, he received an

M.S. A Master of Science (; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree. In contrast to the Master of Arts degree, the Master of Science degree is typically granted for studies in sciences, engineering and medicine ...

in electrical engineering from MIT in 1960. In 1965, Earnest became a lecturer in computer science at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

and the chief administrative officer of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL). Under founding director John McCarthy, he became involved with the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (

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 ...

) startup committee. This association would lead him to the one innovation he has received the most acclaim for: the invention of the

Finger protocol In computer networking, the Name/Finger protocol and the Finger user information protocol are simple network protocols for the exchange of human-oriented status and user information. Name/Finger protocol The Name/Finger protocol is based on Requ ...

() in the early 1970s. In the late 1960s, Earnest continued to diversify the types of technologies he involved himself with. He made significant contributions in the fields of robotics through the creation of systems that coupled

computer vision Computer vision tasks include methods for image sensor, acquiring, Image processing, processing, Image analysis, analyzing, and understanding digital images, and extraction of high-dimensional data from the real world in order to produce numerical ...

with prosthetic and vehicular applications. Following SAIL's merger with the University's computer science department in 1980, Earnest left Stanford to serve as the founding president and director of Imagen Corp. in

Santa Clara, California Santa Clara ( ; Spanish language, Spanish for "Clare of Assisi, Saint Clare") is a city in Santa Clara County, California. The city's population was 127,647 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List of cities and towns i ...

. He returned to Stanford's computer science department in 1985 as a lecturer and associate department chair before retiring as senior research computer scientist emeritus in 1988. Accomplishments in computing aside, Earnest was also a long-time bicycle enthusiast. He has served as director and/or officer in several prominent cycling associations including the U.S. Cycling Federation, th
U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame
and th
Federation of Independent Associations for Cycling
Earnest died on August 27, 2024, at the age of 93.

References

External links

Les Earnest's Homepage at Stanford

RFC 742 - Name/Finger protocol

Cold War Radar System a Trillion Dollar Fraud – Lester Ernest on RAI (1/4)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Earnest, Les 1930 births 2024 deaths American computer scientists Stanford University staff California Institute of Technology alumni Scientists from San Diego