Toru Takahashi

Toru Takahashi (January 1941 to December 20, 2022) was a Japanese computer network researcher and businessman credited with contributing to the spread of the Internet into Japan and the rest of Asia in the 1990s, often called the Father of the Internet in Japan. Since 1986 he worked on a high-speed local area network construction project using UNIX workstations and routers, and in 1993 he became secretary general, later chairman, of the Japan Internet Association; in 1994 he established the Tokyo Internet ISP and became its president. In 2012 he was chosen as the only Japanese member among the thirty-three members of the Internet Society's Internet Hall of Fame in the Global Connectors category.