Professor Pal Spilling

A Norwegian Internet pioneer and Professor Emeritus at the University of Oslo and the UNIK Graduate Center at Kjeller in Norway, he obtained his Cand.Real. degree in Physics from the University of Oslo in 1963. In January 1964 he started on a Ph.D. program at Utrecht University in The Netherlands, and finished his degree in summer 1968 in Experimental Low-Energy Neutron Physics. Subsequently he joined the Nuclear Physics Group at Eindhoven University of Technology in The Netherlands. In January 1972 he joined the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (NDRE) at Kjeller in Norway, and in 1974 began working on computer networks under the leadership of Yngvar Lundh at NDRE in collaboration with the DARPA-funded research program on packet switching and Internet technology in the U.S.A. The first ARPANET node outside the U.S.A. was established at Kjeller, Norway in June 1973 for the NDRE researchers, and by the end of July 1973, an ARPANET node was also set up in the U.K. at the University College London. He visited Professor Peter Kirstein's research group at UCL in 1974 and there worked with Vint Cerf, then Junior Assistant Professor at Stanford University, on the then proposed Transmission Control Protocol where they conducted the first TCP tests between different implementations. During the next few years he also participated in the development of the Internet Protocol and other early computer network protocols. In 1979/80 he was Visiting Scientist with SRI International at Stanford University, where he worked on the Packet Radio program. He left NDRE in August 1982 to join the former Research Department of the Norwegian Telecommunications Administration (NTA-RD), also at Kjeller. At NTA-RD he worked on communications security and the combination of Internet technology and fiber-optic transmission networks. In 1993 he became Professor at Department of informatics, University of Oslo and UNIK, the University Graduate Center at Kjeller. He is internationally recognized for his role in the development of the Internet. His name is engraved in a bronze plaque roll of honour of Internet pioneers at Stanford University.