Internet pioneer Paul Baran dies

PALO ALTO, Calif., March 28 (UPI) -- Internet pioneer Paul Baran has died at his home in Palo Alto, Calif., of lung cancer, his son David said. He was 84.

Baran helped create Arpanet, the government-sponsored forerunner of today's Internet.

Baran died Saturday, The New York Times reported Monday.

Baran's work in the 1960s was so far ahead of its time that when he approached AT&T with his ideas, the company refused, saying they wouldn't work.

"Paul wasn't afraid to go in directions counter to what everyone else thought was the right or only thing to do," said his friend and colleague, Vinton Cerf, a vice president at Google. "AT&T repeatedly said his idea wouldn't work, and wouldn't participate in the Arpanet project."

The Internet ultimately replaced Arpanet, and the packet-switching technology Baran explored remains at the heart of its internal workings.

He was modest about his work.

"The Internet is really the work of a thousand people," Baran said in 2001.

Baran was born on April 29, 1926, in Grondo, Poland. He moved to the United States with his family in 1928, growing up in Philadelphia.

He earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1949 and his first job involved testing radio tubes for use in the early computer that came to be known as Univac.

He married Evelyn Murphy in 1955. They moved to Los Angeles where he took a job at Hughes Aircraft. He enrolled in night classes at UCLA where he earned a master's degree in engineering in 1959.

His wife died in 2007. In addition to his son, he is survived by three grandchildren and his companion, Ruth Rothman.