David Lennox Mills (June 3, 1938 – January 17, 2024) was an American computer engineer and professor emeritus at the University of Delaware. His mother, Adele (née Dougherty), was a pianist, and his father, Alfred, was an engineer. He attended a school in San Mateo, California, for the visually impaired.

Career

In 1977, Mills began working at COMSAT on synchronizing the clocks of computers connected to ARPANET, inventing the Network Time Protocol (NTP). NTP is intended to synchronize all participating computers to within a few milliseconds of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). He told The New Yorker in 2022 that he enjoyed working on synchronized time because no one else was working on it, giving him his own "little fief". and inspired the author of ping. He authored 28 RFCs,

including two Internet Standards.

In 1999, he was inducted as a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, and in 2002, he was inducted as a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for contributions to network protocols and network timekeeping in the development of the Internet. In 2008, Mills was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) for contributions to Internet timekeeping and the development of the Network Time Protocol. In 2013, he received the IEEE Internet Award "for significant leadership and sustained contributions in the research, development, standardization, and deployment of quality time synchronization capabilities for the Internet."

Mills was a professor emeritus at the University of Delaware, where he was a full professor from 1986 to 2008.

Personal life

Mills married Beverly Csizmadia in 1965.

Mills was an amateur radio operator, with callsign W3HCF.

His vision began worsening around 2012, and by 2022 he was fully blind.

References

  • A Maze of Twisty, Turney Passages - Routing in the Internet Swamp. Lecture by David L. Mills at the University of Delaware. Given on May 26, 2005.
  • Oral history interview with David L. Mills, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. Interview covers Mills' invention of Network Time Protocol, his chairing the Internet Architecture Task Force, and interactions with colleagues including Vinton Cerf, David D. Clark, Jon Postel, Peter Kirstein, and David Farber.
  • The Thorny Problem of Keeping the Internet's Time, New Yorker article by Nate Hopper. Popular article on NTP, covering some of the contributions and life of David Mills.