Peter Kirstein
Scientist who connected Europe to what became the internet
PETER KIRSTEIN, the British computer scientist, who has died aged 86, put the first European computer on what became the internet and remained directly involved with its evolution; he also gave the Queen her first email address.
In 1972 American scientists working with the Arpanet (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) – developed in the late 1960s to control against nuclear threats, and ensure survivability of the network in the face of significant disruption) were planning to establish a link to Norway, where there was a seismic array, involving a landline to the UK and then on to the US by satellite.
Kirstein, a professor at London University, suggested that if the line was coming to Britain in any case, why not route it through Britain’s largest computer, based at University College London? He approached the government for funding, but ministers were uninterested. Nor could he muster much enthusiasm from other universities or businesses.
In the end funding came from the Post Office and the National Physical Laboratory, and on July 25 1973 the UCL node of the Arpanet passed its first data between London and California.
For more than a decade Kirstein ran the UK’S connection to Arpanet out of UCL. Other research facilities gradually connected up, establishing a small network in the UK, and in 1976 Kirstein gave the Queen her own email address, HME2, when she came to open a telecoms research centre in Malvern. She became the first head of state to send an email.
As the first ideas for the internet emerged, Kirstein became closely involved. He was responsible for the first implementation in Europe of the TCP/IP protocols which enable different computer networks to share information. Many European governments were dubious about adopting TCP/IP which, by 1983, had been rolled out across the Arpanet.
However, Kirstein was instrumental in persuading other European countries of its advantages, against competition from advocates of the alternative Open Systems Interconnection system.
Kirstein’s group continued to provide the principal internet link between the UK and the US throughout the 1980s, during which time he was responsible for both the “.uk” and “.int” (reserved for international treaty-based organisations) domains. It was Kirstein who insisted on “.uk” as the suffix for British internet addresses on the grounds that the alternative suggested by civil servants – “.gb” – would not include Northern Ireland.
In the 1990s Kirstein served on a UN committee set up to create a network in India, and headed a Nato project to bring the internet to central Asia and the southern Caucasus.
He was born Peter Thomas Kirschstein on June 20 1933 in Berlin into an assimilated Jewish family; his parents were dentists. His mother had been born in England, and in 1937, feeling unsafe in Germany, the family took advantage of her British citizenship and moved to London, changing their name to Kirstein.
From Highgate School Peter read Mathematics at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge. He went on to Stanford University in the US to do a PHD in electrical engineering.
He then joined Cern in Geneva, spending four years as an accelerator physicist, after which he worked for the US General Electric Corporate Research Centre in Zurich.
In 1967 he returned to London, taking a senior position at the University of London Institute of Computer Science. He joined UCL in 1973 as Professor of Computer Communications Systems, becoming the first head of the Computer Science Department in 1979.
Kirstein won numerous honours and awards and was appointed CBE in 2003.
In 1958 he married Gwen Oldham, who survives him with two daughters.
Peter Kirstein, born June 20 1933, died January 8 2020