David J. Farber, ‘Grandfather of the Internet,’ Dies at 91

David J. Farber, a gregarious professor of computer networks sometimes called the “grandfather of the internet” because of the students he trained, died on Feb. 7 in Tokyo. He was 91. His son Emanuel said the apparent cause was heart failure. Professor Farber had been teaching at Keio University in Tokyo since 2018.

He began his career in the mid-1950s at Bell Laboratories, when computers were largely isolated and communicated only by Teletype or punch-card readers. Turning to academia, he guided students who came to be known as the fathers of the Internet Protocol. Weekly meetings in the early 1970s between Farber and a Ph.D.

student, Jonathan Postel, at a Southern California pancake house helped solidify many basic rules for computer communication. Postel’s 1974 dissertation and work by another Farber student, Paul Mockapetris, who helped design the Domain Name System, became foundational to the early internet.

Japan, Tokyo

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