Physics Colloquium, April 8, 2003

Bringing the Web to America

Paul F. Kunz

Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
Stanford University

On 12 December 1991, Dr. Kunz installed the first Web server outside of Europe at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. Today, if you do not have access to the Web you are considered disadvantaged.

Before it made sense for Tim Berners-Lee to invent the Web at CERN, there had to a number of ingredients in place. Dr. Kunz will present a history of how these ingredients developed and the role the academic research community had in forming them. In particular, the role that big science, such as high energy physics, played in giving us the Web we have today.

Dr Kunz received his PhD from Princeton University in 1968 and first went to CERN that year to do an experiment at the PS as a member of the Saclay group. He then went on to Michigan State in 1971 and worked on one of the first experiments at Fermilab. He joined SLAC in 1974 where he has been ever since.

In late '70s, Dr Kunz invented the 168/E emulators and the concept of event processing via processor farms. Dr. Kunz has been a frequent flyer lately because of the popularity of his "C++ for Particle Physicists" course. Since spring of 1995, he has given the course 68 times through out the world to over 2200 students.

3.30 p.m., Smith Laboratory, Room 1005

Refreshments served in Smith 1094 at 3:00 p.m.