Robert M. Metcalfe

Robert Melancton Metcalfe, known as Bob Metcalfe (born April 7, 1946), is an American engineer and entrepreneur who co-invented Ethernet networking technology with David Boggs at Xerox PARC in 1973. He founded 3Com in 1979 to commercialize networking equipment and formulated Metcalfe's law, which describes how a telecommunications network's value grows with its number of connected users. He later worked in venture capital and, from 2011 to 2021, taught innovation and entrepreneurship at the University of Texas at Austin. He received the IEEE Medal of Honor in 1996, the National Medal of Technology in 2003, and the ACM A.M. Turing Award in 2022.