In 1990 BITNET merged with CSNET, a computer science and engineering academic network, to form CREN Corporation for Research andd Educational Networking).
Inviting leading researchers to give lectures kept him in touch with a wide academic network and new developments.
Aspiring academics, he said, would thank teachers, parents, grant makers and others to "emphasize that they depend on an academic network and that they belong to it".
By the time the academic network was shut down in 1996, it connected 6.6 million host computers and extended to 93 countries.
One reason may be that the rapid rise of the internet, originally an obscure academic network funded by America's Department of Defence, took everyone by surprise.
Professor Largier says: "The author of an academic book often lays out his entire academic network in the 'acknowledgment,' emphasizing not only aspects of professional gratitude but also emotional relationships: friendships, hardships, help.
BITNET was the product of joint efforts by researchers at the City University of New York (CUNY) in New York City and Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, to create an academic network by linking existing campus mainframe computers.
It was our government, for example, that decided to turn over the military-academic network known as the Internet to the general public; that one turned out pretty well.
Computer security experts say privately that the number of projects deployed is actually much higher, and that the systems have been under development since at least 1996, when the internet had barely begun its transition from a US government and academic network to an international and public one.
"He is a hero in this field," said Lawrence H. Landweber, a computer scientist at the University of Wisconsin who in 1980 made the pioneering decision to use the basic TCP/IP Internet protocol for CSNET, an academic network that preceded NSFnet and laid the foundation for "internetworking".
