Robert Metcalfe is an electrical engineer who has an estimated net worth of $250 million. He was born Robert Melancton Metcalfe on April 7, 1946 in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1969 with two degrees. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Engineering as well as in Industrial Engineering from the MIT Sloan School of Management. He then earned his M.S. in 1970 from the Harvard Business School.

Mr. Metcalfe is best known as the co-inventor of Ethernet, founder of 3Com and the author of Metcalfe’s Law. He co-invented Ethernet with David Boggs while he was working at Xerox PARC in 1973. It is a standard for connecting computers over short distances. He received the Association of Computing Machinery Grace Murray Hopper Award for his contributions to the development of the local networks specifically the Ethernet. He also formulated the Metcalfe’s Law which states that the value of a telecommunications networking is proportional to the square of the number of connected users in the system.

In 1979, Bob Metcalfe left PARC and founded 3Com, a manufacturer of computer networking equipment. In 1990, he lost in the boardroom skirmish for him to be named the CEO. He left the company he founded and began a ten-year stint as a pundit and publisher as well as a writer in an Internet Column for InfoWorld.

Robert Metcalfe also co-founded Pop!Tech, an executive technology conference. In 2001, he became a venture capitalist. By 2006, he was the general partner of Polaris Venture Partners. Beginning in January 2012, he held the position of Professor of Electrical Engineering and Director of Innovation at the University of Texas at Austin.