] For the work that began on that yellow pad, the
] Association for Computing Machinery plans to announce
] Wednesday that Vinton G. Cerf and Robert E. Kahn will
] receive the 2004 A. M. Turing Award, widely considered to
] be the computing field's equivalent of the Nobel Prize.

Not so surprising

Vint Cerf, who was a graduate student working in Len Kleinrock's lab at UCLA when the first Arpanet link was installed there in 1969, is aware of the egos involved in this debate over legacy. He said he hoped the announcement of the Turing Award would not rankle colleagues.

I work down the hall / "next door" to Cerf's co-author on RFC 675, "Specification of Internet Transmission Control Program" and on a January 1974 conference paper which actually precedes the publication of the canonical and widely cited Cerf-Kahn IEEE paper of May 1974 cited in this Katie Hafner piece.

I haven't had a chance to chat with him about this NYT article, but he didn't seem at especially "rankled" this past week ... and while it's no fun to miss out on a chance to read your name in the Gray Lady, I should think that any inkling of rankling is more likely attributable to losing out on a share of the $100,000 prize.