Vinton Cerf

In addition to his well-publicized technical contributions, for which he won the Turing Award, Vint Cerf crafted a unique vision of what ACM could be and achieve as an organization. He has served as a member of ACM Council three times, and was elected ACM President in 2012. After completing his term as Past President, he became the Awards Co-Chair.

That much is in the public record. But his singular contribution to ACM remains largely unknown: Vint was the principal driver in establishing the ACM Fellows Program in 1993. The Fellows program, of course, recognizes the top 1% of ACM members from around the world for their outstanding accomplishments and service to the computing community. The luster of becoming a Fellow has not diminished with time. Indeed, with the newer Distinguished Member grade, and with the eminence of each year's Fellows class (13 of whom have gone on to win the Turing Award), the program has only grown in stature. As for impact, Fellows constitute some of ACM's best ambassadors and serve as models for younger members. While the Fellows program is now an established part of the ACM "landscape," this was not always the case - and likely wouldn't be had Vint not championed the concept. This 2019 ACM Presidential Award recognizes his extraordinary record of service to ACM.

Vinton G. Cerf and Robert E. Kahn led the design and implementation of the Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) that are the basis for current internetworking. They formulated fundamental design principles of networking, specified TCP/IP to meet these requirements, prototyped TCP/IP, and coordinated several early TCP/IP implementations. Since then, they have continued to provide leadership in the networking research community and in the emerging industries of internetworking and telecommunications.

New York Times Article