Lester (Les) Donald Earnest

A United States computer scientist, Earnest began his career as a computer programmer in 1954 during a stint as a U.S. Navy Aviation Electronics Officer & Digital Computer Project Officer at Naval Air Development Center, Johnsville, Pennsylvania. In 1953 he received a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Caltech, and he received his M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from MIT in 1960. In 1956 he joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to help design the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) air defense system. From 1958–1965 he was Subdepartment Head at Mitre Corp., in Bedford, MA & Arlington, VA.

Starting in 1959 the focus of his career shifted to innovations within the field of word processing. During this time Earnest was responsible for developing the "first pen-based computer system that reliably recognized cursive writing" and the first spell checker. In the late 1960s he continued to diversify the types of technologies with which he involved himself. He made significant contributions in the fields of robotics through the creation of systems that coupled computer vision with prosthetic and vehicular applications.

In 1965, he became Executive Officer at Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and Earnest soon became deeply involved with the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPAnet) startup committee. This association would lead him to the one innovation he has received the most acclaim for: the invention of the Finger protocol (RFC 742) in the early 1970s. From 1980–1985 he was the Founding President and Director, Imagen Corp., in Santa Clara, CA, and from 1985–1988 he was Associate Chair and Lecturer at the Computer Science Dept., Stanford University. Earnest held the position of Senior Research Computer Scientist Emeritus at Stanford University, and became Chairman, Board of Directors, GeoGroup Inc., Menlo Park, CA in 1991.

Professional associations to which he belonged included: 1994–present Member, ASTM International F08.53 Standards Committee (Headgear); 1964–present Member (now Life), IEEE; 1955–present Member, ACM; 1991–93: Member, Organizing and Advisory Committees of first three Conferences on Computers, Freedom and Privacy; 1988–96 Member, American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Z90 Standards Committee (Helmets); 1980 Treasurer, First National Conference of American Association for Artificial Intelligence; 1974–76 Chairman, ACM Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence (SIGART); 1973–77 Local Arrangements Chair and Secretary-Treasurer, International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence; and 1960–80 Member, Sigma Xi.

He was also a long-time bicycle enthusiast, and served as Director and/or Officer in several prominent cycling associations including the U.S. Cycling Federation, the U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame, and the Federation of Independent Associations for Cycling.