Scientist 1

Name: Lawrence Roberts

Born: December 21, 1937

Country: United States

Scientific Field(s): Computer Science

Short Bio: The U.S. Department of Defense contracted the MIT degree-decorated Lawrence "Larry" Gilman Roberts in February 1965 to design a computer network for ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency). Roberts figured out how to connect major computers located in Lincoln Laboratory and in Santa Monica, California, and wrote a paper about his findings. ARPA eventually convinced Roberts to spearhead the development of the ARPANET, a new multi-node network using packet-switching technology that launched in 1969. He developed one of the original programs to send email in 1971, and founded Telenet, the first packet switching-based networking company, in 1973.
(Source 1, Source 2, Source 3, Source 4, Source 5)

Scientist 2

Name: Leonard Kleinrock

Born: June 13, 1934

Country: United States

Scientific Field(s): Computer Science, Mathematics

Short Bio: Ol’ Lennie K. loves rabbits…if by rabbits you mean packets. He came up with the math behind the process of packet switching, and his early interest in technology sparked a fire that led him to finish first in his class from the evening session at the City College of New York and earn full funding for an electrical engineering grad program at MIT, where he studied data networks. Kleinrock and his team developed the first of the four nodes hooked up to ARPANET, and sent the first internet transmission (through ARPANET) from UCLA to Stanford in October 1969.
(Source 1, Source 2, Source 3, Source 4 Source 5, Source 6)

Scientist 3

Name: Vint Cerf

Born: June 23, 1943

Country: United States

Scientific Field(s): Computer science

Short Bio: You can’t turn your nose up at Vint Cerf’s contribution to the internet unless you’d like to live in a world where that favorite cat video of yours never loads—or more likely, probably doesn’t exist. Cerf, alongside co-Kahnspirator Robert Kahn, invented the protocol to end all protocols in 1973: TCP/IP, which literally instructs computers on how to send and receive information. Without it, all of our information might be stuck in limbo between computers, hopelessly lost like someone stuck in The Twilight Zone. Thankfully, Cerf’s work kept us squarely out of a universe where gremlins take down airplane wings mid-flight and people have pig-snout noses. He also led the team behind the first commercial email service, and acts as the "Chief Internet Evangelist" at none other than Google.
(Source)

Scientist 4

Name: Robert Kahn

Born: December 23, 1938

Country: United States

Scientific Field(s): Computer Science

Short Bio: Robert Kahn was working for ARPA in the 1970s when he and his friend Vint Cerf (then an assistant professor at Stanford) connected to design what would become the TCP/IP protocol suite. Needing something that would work with any machine, he developed the protocol with Cerf and they published a paper in May 1974. A little over two years later, from inside a delivery van turned transmitter from Stanford, Kahn and Cerf sent packets over the internet with TCP/IP. After another year, they sent data over three networks. By 1983, ARPANET adopted those essential protocols.
(Source)

Scientist 5

Name: Sir Tim Berners-Lee

Born: June 8, 1955

Country: United Kingdom, United States

Scientific Field(s): Computer Science

Short Bio: Queen Elizabeth didn’t knight Berners-Lee in 2004 just for funzies. Thanks to his work, internet users around the world have a reasonable way to access information: the world wide web. Berners-Lee invented the web himself at the European particle physics lab CERN in 1989. He wrote the first web browser and web server in 1990 (the first website lives here, if you're interested in seeing how things looked back when images and color weren't yet a thing online). He also didn’t originally want users to see URLs—only the text and links on a page—although that idea fell through. Hey, at least the idea about keeping the web free for everyone didn't fall through.

Yet.
(Source)

Scientist 6

Name: Elizabeth "Jake" Feinler

Born: March 2, 1931

Country: United States

Scientific Field(s): Computer Science

Short Bio: Elizabeth "Jake" Feinler was a definitive early internet MVP—all the way from the bell-bottomed 70s to the big-haired 80s. Feinler ran the Network Information Center, a system that predated the Domain Name Service. The NIC (network information center) called Menlo Park, California home. NIC was a one-stop shop for finding existing addresses and registering new ones. Feinler and company also came up with the major domain categories, which separate websites into the .coms, .edus, the .orgs, and the .nets that we continue to use (except when using top-level domains).
(Source 1, Source 2, Source 3)

Scientist 7

Name: Paul Baran

Born and Died: April 29, 1926 – March 26, 2011

Country: United States

Scientific Field(s): Computer Science

Short Bio: Three men danced around the notion of packet switching independent of each other. Leonard Kleinrock came up with the math behind the concept, a Brit named Donald Davies thought of a system of using something he called, "packets," and Paul Baran introduced the idea of "distributed communication" to the United States during the Cold War. Baran’s ideas included the fundamental concept that the modern internet vitally depends on today: the ability to adapt and quickly reroute information if any part of a network fails.
(Source 1, Source 2, Source 3, Source 4)

Scientist 8

Name: J.C.R. Licklider

Born and Died: March 11, 1915 – June 26, 1990

Country: United States

Scientific Field(s): Computer Science

Short Bio: J.C.R. Licklider, or "Lick" (his preference, we swear), contributed to the internet as we know it today in mostly indirect ways. Lick published a paper called "Man Computer Symbiosis" in 1960 about direct interaction with smart machines. In 1962 he wrote about an "Intergalactic Computer Network" (which sounds like a great SyFy made-for-TV movie, if you ask us) and in 1968 he talked about "the computer as a communication device," which (unlike actual SyFy movies) predicted almost exactly what internet usage looks like today. Lick directed ARPA in the early 60s, and his visionary influence (certainly in part) led to the birth of ARPANET.
(Source 1, Source 2, Source 3, Source 4, Source 5)