Raymond Tomlinson

Biography

In 1971, Raymond Tomlinson was a developer of the TENEX time-sharing system, popular among computer science departments attached to the fledgling ARPANET, when he pioneered the network messaging system known today as email. Many aspects of his first email persist today-most notably his choice of the "@" symbol to separate user and computer names. He also made early contributions to protocols that are the basis for Internet communication-the three-way-handshake of the TCP protocol has its roots in his 'Selecting Sequence Numbers' paper. A Senior Member of the IEEE, Mr. Tomlinson has received many awards including induction into the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Alumni Hall of Fame. He is principle engineer at Bolt, Beranek and Newman in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he has been employed since 1967.