Vinton Cerf, widely known as the “Father of the Internet,” has been awarded the IEEE Medal of Honor in 2023 for his contributions to the development of the Internet architecture and for his leadership in its growth as a critical infrastructure for society.

In 1974, Robert Kahn and Cerf, who was working as program manager at the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Information Processing Techniques Office, jointly designed the Transmission Control Protocol and the Internet Protocol. Together they make up the Internet’s core architecture and enable computers to connect and exchange traffic.

“Cerf’s tireless commitment to the Internet’s evolution, improvement, oversight, and evangelism throughout its history has made an indelible impact on the world,” said one of the endorsers of the award. “It is largely due to his efforts that we even have the Internet, which has changed the way society lives.

Since 2005, Cerf has been vice president and chief Internet evangelist at Google in Reston, Va., promoting the usage of the Internet for the benefit of the public. Cerf is also in charge of locating new technologies and creating policies that assist the production of Internet-based products and services.

Cerf has received several recognitions for his work, including the 2004 Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery. The honor is known as the Nobel Prize of computing. Together with Kahn, he was awarded a 2013 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, a 2005 U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom, and a 1997 U.S. National Medal of Technology and Innovation.