It has been a privilege over the years to have known a number of fellows of the IEEE and now I am honored to be joining their ranks. I first joined the IEEE in 1967 during my senior year at Lehigh University. With the support of a number of industry colleagues, the senior member status followed in 1994. I had no idea that fellow might be in the future.
As far as I know, nobody at Lehigh was thinking about the Internet while I was there, but Paul Baran had been thinking about the concept since 1959 when he began working for the RAND Corporation. The cold war was underway and Paul was focused on developing a communication network that could withstand a nuclear attack. The Internet and the World Wide Web followed as a natural evolution that has now reached it’s infancy. I have played a very small role and the tribute should go to Paul Baran, Vint Cert, Tim Berners-Lee and their colleagues.
Knovel Director John Patrick Named IEEE Fellow
Board Member Recognized for Internet Leadership
New York, NY – February 5th, 2008 – Knovel (www.knovel.com) today announced that John R. Patrick, a member of Knovel’s board of directors, has been named an IEEE Fellow in recognition of his leadership in technical and policy development of the World Wide Web. IEEE Fellow is the highest grade of membership and is recognized by the technical community as a prestigious honor and an important career achievement.
Mr. Patrick was a founding member of the World Wide Web Consortium at MIT in 1994 and of the Global Internet Project in 1995. Mr. Patrick was also instrumental in the development of e-commerce at IBM in 1997 as vice president for Internet technology. He is a member of the Internet Society, the Association for Computing Machinery, and The International Honor Society Beta Gamma Sigma. His book, Net Attitude, was published in 2001 and helped guide corporate strategies to leverage the Internet.
Mr. Patrick is a member of the board of directors of Jupitermedia, Knovel, Danbury Hospital and Danbury Health Systems, as well as a member of the Lehigh University Engineering Advisory Board.
“It’s great to have the IEEE validate the reason we recruited John to our board,” said Chris Forbes, CEO of Knovel. “John is a visionary with deep understanding of the role the Internet can and should play in helping people tackle their work efficiently and effectively. His insights meshed perfectly with the deep domain expertise of our board members who were principal executives at Thompson and Oxford University Press.“
About IEEE
The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) – the world’s largest technical professional society – fosters technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity. Through its more than 370,000 members in 160 countries, IEEE is a leading authority on a wide variety of areas ranging from aerospace systems, computers and telecommunications to biomedical engineering, electric power and consumer electronics. Dedicated to the advancement of technology, the IEEE publishes 30 percent of the world’s literature in the electrical and electronics engineering and computer science fields, and has developed more than 900 active industry standards. The organization also sponsors or co-sponsors nearly 400 international technical conferences each year.
About Knovel
Knovel is an online resource used by applied scientists and practicing engineers around the world to quickly locate relevant and reliable technical information. Knovel’s thousands of customers include 75 of the Fortune 500 companies and 300 leading engineering and science universities worldwide.
Knovel has uniquely optimized content, search capabilities, and interactive tools for specific engineering disciplines. Knovel’s content includes material properties, process and design information, standard procedures, equations, and formulations. Close to 2,000 leading reference works and databases from over 40 international publishers and professional societies are integrated to provide a single source of answers to technical questions.
