Peter T. Kirstein

Computer scientist and early developer of the Internet

• Born: June 20, 1933
• Place of Birth: Berlin, Germany
• Died: January 8, 2020
• Place of Death: London, United Kingdom

Primary Company/Organization: University College London

Introduction

Peter Kirstein was a pioneer in helping to establish the Internet in Europe and led the group that established the first Internet connection between the United States and the United Kingdom. He was first head of the computer science department at University College London and was involved in many international collaborations over the course of his career.

Early Life

Peter Thomas Kirstein was born June 20, 1933, in Berlin, Germany, just a few months after Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party had taken power. Kirstein's parents were Jewish, and by 1935, social attitudes and oppressive laws were making it increasingly difficult for Jews to live freely in Germany. The Kirsteins decided to leave for England. Peter's mother had been born in England while her parents were briefly working there, so she easily obtained a visa. She immigrated to London, England, in 1936, and Peter and his father followed in 1937. Peter attended the Highgate School in London, where he excelled at the subjects he enjoyed, such as mathematics, but did poorly in those he did not. Instead of a year of national service before starting his studies at a university, Kirstein's uncle arranged for him to study at the University of California at Los Angeles for a semester. Afterward, he took a summer job with the U.S. Army calculating statistics on rain runoff at airports.

Kirstein received a scholarship to study at Cambridge University, where he studied mathematics during his first two years and electrical engineering in his third. In 1954, he earned his bachelor's degree from Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He was granted a fellowship to study electrical engineering at Stanford University, earning a master's degree in 1955 and a doctorate in 1957. There had been some problems as he began his doctoral work, but once he had the right adviser, Kirstein completed his doctoral work in only six months.

Ignoring offers to join various universities, Kirstein spent the next four years at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Conseille Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire, or CERN) in Switzerland, where he was exposed to the latest computers. He then took a job with General Electric in Switzerland, in part so that he could continue to enjoy skiing there. His job was to keep tabs on relevant research at universities throughout the world. The contacts he made while in that position shaped the course of his career. While visiting the University of London's Institute of Computer Science in 1965, he decided he would like to work there; he became a reader there in 1967 and received a D.Sc. in engineering from London University in 1970.

Life's Work

Kirstein is best known for his work in establishing the Internet in Europe and for his vision of the global possibilities for communication it offered. After receiving his doctorate from Stanford University, he worked at Stanford University, then moved to Switzerland to work at CERN in Geneva and the General Electric Research and Development Center in Zurich. However, his early scientific work was focused on electron beam design for microwave tubes and accelerators. Kirstein became a reader in the Institute of Computer Science at the University of London in 1967, and in 1970 became a professor of computer communications systems. In 1973, he joined University College London (UCL) in the Department of Statistics and Computer Science. The same year, he established one of the first two international nodes for the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), a precursor to the Internet, and led the group that established Internet links between the United States and Great Britain, maintaining them throughout the 1980s. During this period, he also managed the .int and .uk domains.

Kirstein was appointed the first head of the computer science department at UCL, serving in that capacity from 1980 until 1994. He next became director of research for the UCL computer science department; he has also been director of the United Kingdom's Virtual Centre of Excellence in Digital Broadcasting. As of 2012, he had published a book and more than 170 scientific papers. He was also involved in the technological aspects of the British Library for many years, including work in digitizing journals and establishing online access to databases; he was chair of the New Technology Group of the British Library in the 1980s.

Most of Kirstein's later work involves networked multimedia and high-speed networks. He served as the leader of SILK, SPONGE, OCCASION projects, sponsored by the European Community and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and designed to provide Internet access to the national research and education networks (NRENs) of countries in central Asia and the Caucasus. He was involved in many projects related to Internet protocol version 6 (IPv6), a revision of the Internet protocol implementing a new addressing system with larger address spaces (128 bits as opposed to 32 bits) and thus allowing far more addresses to be created.

Kirstein worked internationally for much of his career, involved with many international collaborations. In 1962, he spent six months working in Russia, and he worked for extended periods in Switzerland and the United States over the course of his career. He was involved in many collaborative efforts funded by the European Commission, including 6WINIT, a project to validate the mobile wireless Internet, using IPv6, in Europe; Convergence of Internet, Asynchronous Transfer Mode and Satellite (COIAS), a project to demonstrate the feasibility of using satellite networks and asynchronous transfer mode for the global Internet structure using IPv6; reconfigurable ubiquitous networked embedded systems (RUNES), a project to develop standardized technology for embedded network sensors and networks of them; and U-2010, a crisis management project based on IPv6.

Kirstein also taught in Japan and Malaysia; served as a private consultant in several countries; chaired the International Collaboration Board (1983–2004), promoting cooperation to achieve interoperability in command and information systems among NATO defense organizations, national defense organizations, and national research organizations; and served on the NATO Science Committee's Networking Panel.

Personal Life

Kirstein held teaching and research roles in the Department of Computer Science within the faculty of engineering science of UCL for many years. In 2003, he was made a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his work in developing the Internet. Also in 2003, he received the Jonathan B. Postel Service Award from the Internet Society, in honor of his work in helping establish the Internet as a global network. He received many other awards over his lifetime, including being named a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, the Institution of Electrical Engineering, the British Computer Society, and the U.K. Royal Academy of Engineering. In 1999, he received ACM's Special Interest Group in Communications and Computer Networks (SIGCOMM) award of the Academy for Computing Machinery for his work on the Internet. He was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in 2012.

Kirstein married Gwen Oldham in 1958. They were the parents of two daughters. Kirstein died in London in 2020.

Bibliography

Bentley, Peter J. Digitized: The Science of Computers and How It Shapes Our World. New York: Oxford UP, 2012. Print.

Gillies, James, and Robert Cailliau. How the Web Was Born: The Story of the World Wide Web. New York: Oxford UP, 2000. Print.

Hafner, Katie, and Matthew Lyon. Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet. New York: Simon, 1996. Print.

Malamud, Carl. Exploring the Internet: A Technical Travelogue. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice hall, 1992. Print.

Mori, Elisabetta. "Peter Kirstein Obituary." The Guardian, 9 Feb. 2020, www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/09/peter-kirstein-obituary. Accessed 7 Mar. 2024.

Wu, Tim. The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires. New York: Vintage, 2011. Print.