It's a good thing Leonard Kleinrock loved Superman and comic books. If not, you might not be surfing the internet or posting on Facebook or Instagram.
Today, Kleinrock, 89, is a distinguished professor of computer science at the University of California at Los Angeles. Most people know him as one of the founding fathers of the internet.
Kleinrock, a self-described geek, figured out how massive computers could talk to each other. He's the guy who developed the mathematical theory of data networks, the technology underpinning the internet.
He's the "professor who was there when the internet was turned on," PC Magazine noted in 2018.
In 2012, the Internet Hall of Fame inducted Kleinrock in the inaugural class.
Find Your Passion Like Leonard Kleinrock
Rewind to 1941. That's when Kleinrock got his first glimpse of the "magic" of technology. He was just a curious 7-year-old kid who grew up in a tough New York City neighborhood in Harlem. But there he saw technology's ability to change the world.
While reading a Superman comic book, he spotted a centerfold showing how to build a crystal radio. "What attracted me to that was I like to build things," Kleinrock told Investor's Business Daily. Once built — with parts you could cobble together on your own — you could listen to music without batteries or electricity.
So Kleinrock gathered parts and started building his music radio. He got an empty toilet paper roll at home. Kleinrock found wire in the street to make a coil. He made the crystal out of his dad's old razor blade and a piece of pencil lead. He didn't have an earpiece, so he went to a nearby candy store and unscrewed the earpiece from a telephone. Finally, he needed something called a variable capacitor. His mom bought him one for a nickel at a store a subway ride away.
When the radio assembly was complete, the music played. And hearing the music opened up a whole new world. Engineering, science and technology hooked Kleinrock. "I had no idea how it worked," he recalled. "It was magic."
Kleinrock: Build On Early Success
Kleinrock says the launchpad for his success came very early in life. When he was a Boy Scout, his Scoutmaster challenged him to become the first Eagle Scout (the highest rank and achievement attainable) in his troop. "Eagle Scout was madly difficult, and I thought it was beyond my grasp, but I took up the challenge," Kleinrock said.
His challenge: Go out in nature and identify dozens of birds by name. The first summer, despite hard work and coming home "thin as a rail," Kleinrock didn't master the bird assignment. But the second year he aced it. And that early success taught him a key lesson that catapulted him the rest of his life.
"Basically, it was my first success, and I proved to myself that if I work hard enough, I could achieve something of great difficulty, and that stuck with me," Kleinrock said. "It set the stage for me saying to myself, 'Yeah, you can do it.' "
Tap A Can-Do Spirit Like Kleinrock
That can-do spirit paid off years later after Kleinrock graduated from the Bronx High School of Science. He worked on his bachelor's degree in chemical engineering at the City College of New York after working all day.
"I had to go to night school because I had to earn money" and help my parents financially, Kleinrock said. "It was another tough test. And I could have easily dropped out."
But he stuck it out. And he said he benefited from learning from college professors who worked by day and taught by night. The benefit of that, he says, is that he saw the importance of learning both the theoretical and the practical, real-life side of what he was studying.
"The practical side is what I enjoyed as a kid," Kleinrock said. "(The classes) were intuitive, practical, hands-on. How do things work? How do you build it? The electrical engineering background taught me how things work and why they work. And that is an unbeatable combination."
Solve Big Problems With Big Impact
Want to create the next big thing? You must try to solve problems nobody else is tackling, says Kleinrock. "You have to have a lot of curiosity and wonder about things," Kleinrock said.
Kleinrock's advisor urged him to get a Ph.D. after getting a master's degree from MIT (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in 1959. Kleinrock was reluctant, though. He was just married and his first son was on the way. Plus, he already had a good job at MIT.
Finally, he relented and told his advisor: "Look, if I'm going to devote four more years getting a Ph.D., I have two conditions: Number one: I want to work with the best professor. (He ended up working with Claude Shannon, known today as the "father of digital communications"). Number two: I want to do something with impact and research a problem that people have not looked at yet."
Take On Hard Jobs Like Kleinrock
Kleinrock, who earned his Ph.D. from MIT in 1963, skipped the easy assignments. "That's not what I signed up for," Kleinrock said. He wanted to tackle something of significance.
After spending a good deal of his life at MIT and its famed Lincoln Lab, where he was "surrounded by computers," the idea that made him famous came to him in the early 1960s.
"I knew one day they (computers) were going to have to talk to each other," Kleinrock said. "I said, 'Look, that's a problem that nobody's looking at. That's clearly important. If I solve it, it will have impact.' " His so-called "packet-switching" network (essentially the first computer router) changed the world.
"My UCLA computer lab was selected to be the first node of this network," he wrote in a Los Angeles Times opinion piece. "On Oct. 29, 1969, a simple 'Lo' became the first internet message, from UCLA to Stanford Research Institute. We had typed the first two letters of 'login' when the network crashed." This moment of transmission over that two-computer communication network is regarded as the founding moment of the internet.
Embrace Wake-Up Calls When They Rock Your World
Kleinrock rose to the challenge as a Boy Scout and earning his B.A. at night. But he learned another key to success — bouncing back from an ego-bruising setback — in the late 1950s. That's when he arrived at MIT's campus to earn his M.A. In one of his first courses, his professor told the class that this is the course "that will separate the men from the boys," Kleinrock recalled.
On his first test, Kleinrock got a 50%. The low grade shook him. "Oh my God," said Kleinrock, recalling his reaction. "I'd never gotten any grade lower than a 90 since I was a kid."
But Kleinrock quickly realized the problem. In the past, his classes were easier. And the students he competed against weren't the caliber of the ones at MIT. He only put in the effort required at the City College of New York, not MIT, where he earned a full-ride scholarship. "I was now surrounded by the world's smartest kids," Kleinrock said. His fix? Work harder. Study longer. Raise his game.
"I buckled down and I got an A in the course," Kleinrock said. But he says he learned an even bigger lesson: "If you get a wake-up call, you can go in a corner and cry and be defeated, or you can do something about it and push yourself," Kleinrock said. "And that's really important because too many people just get crushed instead of taking it (a setback) as a challenge."
Kleinrock's Keys
- Pioneering computer scientist whose work laid the foundation for the internet.
- Overcame: Limited financial means growing up and underestimating the difficulty of earning advanced academic degrees.
- Lesson: "Never, never take a job no matter how high the salary (if you hate it). Don't ever fall into that trap."
