He was a member of the staff at
CERN from 1959 to 1963. He did research for
General Electric at
Zurich from 1963 to 1967. He knew
Vint Cerf since 1967. Kirstein was a professor at the
University of London Institute of Computer Science (ICS) from 1970 to 1973. After that, he joined the faculty at the
University College London in 1973, serving as the first head of the computer science department from 1980 to 1994. He supervised
Jon Crowcroft.
Internet development Building on the work of
Donald Davies at the
National Physical Laboratory in the 1960s, in 1973 Kirstein's research group at
University College London became one of only the two international connections on the
ARPANET, alongside Norway (
NORSAR and
NDRE). UCL thereafter provided a gateway between the ARPANET and
British academic networks which was the first
internetwork for
resource sharing. Research led by
Bob Kahn at
DARPA and
Vint Cerf at
Stanford University and later DARPA resulted in the formulation of the
Transmission Control Program (TCP), with its specification written by Cerf with
Yogen Dalal and Carl Sunshine in December 1974. The following year, testing began through concurrent implementations at Stanford, University College London and
BBN. The ARPANET connection to UCL later grew into the trans-Atlantic
SATNET. A two-way, followed by a three-way internetworking experiment linking UCL, via SATNET, with nodes in the ARPANET, and with a mobile vehicle in
PRNET took place in 1977. Kirstein and his team members participated from the outset of the
Internet Experiment Note meetings, beginning in March 1977. His research group at UCL played a significant role in the very earliest experimental work on what became the
TCP/IP. In 1978, Kirstein co-authored with Vint Cerf one of the most significant early technical papers on the
internetworking concept. He chaired the International Cooperation Board (ICB), formed by Cerf in 1979, to coordinate activities to develop packet satellite research. UCL adopted TCP/IP in November 1982, ahead of the ARPANET, becoming one of the first nodes on the Internet. In early 1983, Kirstein chaired the International Collaboration Board, which involved six
NATO countries, served on the Networking Panel of the NATO Science Committee (serving as chair in 2001), and served on Advisory Committees for the Australian Research Council, the Canadian Department of Communications, the German GMD, and the Indian Education and Research Network (ERNET) Project. He led the Silk Project, which provides satellite-based Internet access to the Newly Independent States in the Southern Caucasus and Central Asia. In 2012 Kirstein was inducted into the
Internet Hall of Fame by the
Internet Society. In 2015 he was awarded the prestigious
Marconi Prize. == Personal life ==