Robert M. Metcalfe

Dr. Robert M. Metcalfe, as of 4/4/2022, is still a free agent prospecting for his 6th career. And they are getting warm. Bob was for 11 years Professor of Innovation at the Cockrell School of Engineering, Professor of Entrepreneurship at the McCombs School of Business, and Murchison Fellow of Free Enterprise at The University of Texas at Austin. Bob was an Internet pioneer beginning in 1970 at MIT, Harvard, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (Parc), Stanford, and 3Com. He invented Ethernet at Parc on May 22, 1973. Today Ethernet is the Internet’s standard plumbing, each year adding billions of ports. The most important new fact about the human condition is that they are now suddenly connected.

Among many other honors, Bob has won the Bell, Hopper, Japan C&C, Marconi, McCluskey, Shannon, and Stibitz Prizes. He is a Life Trustee Emeritus of MIT and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. Bob received the IEEE Medal of Honor in 1996 and the National Medal of Technology in 2005 for leadership in the invention, standardization, and commercialization of Ethernet.

Bob founded Internet startup 3Com Corporation in Silicon Valley on June 4, 1979. He took 3Com public on March 21, 1984, and “retired” in 1990. In 1999, 3Com’s revenue peaked at $5.7B.

During the 1990s, Bob was CEO/Publisher/Pundit at IDG/InfoWorld Magazine. His Internet column, FROM THE ETHER, was read weekly by a million? information technologists among IDG’s 90 countries.

During the 2000s, Bob was a limited, venture, general, and now emeritus Polaris Partner in Boston.