Pål Spilling

Who is Pål Spilling?

Pål Spilling is a Norwegian Internet pioneer and Professor Emeritus at the University of Oslo and the UNIK Graduate Center at Kjeller in Norway. He obtained his cand.real. degree in physics from the University of Oslo in 1963. In January 1964 he started on a PhD program at Utrecht University in The Netherlands, and finished his degree in summer 1968 in experimental low-energy neutron physics. Subsequently he joined the nuclear physics group at Eindhoven University of Technology in The Netherlands. In January 1972 Spilling joined the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment at Kjeller in Norway, and in 1974 started working on computer networks under the leadership of Yngvar Lundh at NDRE in collaboration with the DARPA-funded research program on packet switching and Internet technology in USA.

The first ARPANET node outside USA was established at Kjeller, Norway in June 1973 for the NDRE researchers, and by the end of July 1973, an ARPANET node was also set up in the U.K. at the University College London. Spilling visited Professor Peter Kirstein's research group at UCL in 1974 and there worked with Vint Cerf, then junior assistant professor at Stanford University, on the then proposed Transmission Control Protocol where they conducted the first TCP tests between different implementations.