Om Malik link-posting on his blog:

David Mills, the creator of Network Time Protocol (NTP), which is fundamental to the functioning of networks. Mills, nicknamed the Internet’s Time Lord by his peers, passed away on January 17 at the age of 85. His contributions to the development and evolution of the Internet are numerous and far-reaching. We are quietly losing a generation that has helped build the network we often take for granted. Source: RIP, Internet’s Time Lord – On my Om

I do deal with NTP protocol from time to time at my job as a solution architect. The fathers (and mothers) of the modern computing era are dying.