About Ray Tomlinson
Raymond Samuel Tomlinson (April 23, 1941 – March 5, 2016) was an American computer programmer who invented the first email program on the ARPANET system, the precursor to the Internet, in 1971; it was the first system able to send mail between users on different hosts connected to ARPANET. Previously, mail could be sent only to others who used the same computer. To achieve this, he used the @ sign to separate the username from the name of their machine, a scheme which has been used in email addresses ever since. The Internet Hall of Fame in its account of his work commented "Tomlinson's email program brought about a complete revolution, fundamentally changing the way people communicate." He is credited with the invention of the TCP three-way handshake which underlies HTTP and many other key Internet protocols. The first email Tomlinson sent was a test message between two computers placed side by side. Adrienne LaFrance of The Atlantic described him as a "self-professed Luddite," noting that he did not own a mobile phone and had only recently created a Facebook account.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.