Leonard Kleinrock (born June 13, 1934 in New York) is a computer scientist, and a professor of computer science at UCLA, who made several important contributions to the field of computer networking, in particular to the theoretical side of computer networking. He also played an important role in the development of the ARPANET at UCLA. His most well-known and significant work is his early work on queueing theory, which has applications in many fields, among them as a key mathematical background to packet switching, the basic technology behind the Internet. His initial contribution to this field was his doctoral thesis in 1962, published in book form in 1964; he later published several of the standard works on the subject. His theoretical work on hierarchical routing, done in the late 1970s with his then-student Farouk Kamoun, is now critical to the operation of today's world-wide Internet.