[1] Richard Stevens was born in 1951 in Luanshya, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), where his father worked for the copper industry.
The family later moved to Salt Lake City, Utah, Hurley, New Mexico, Washington, D.C., and Phalaborwa, South Africa.
He moved to Tucson in 1975 where he was employed at Kitt Peak National Observatory as a computer programmer until 1982.
From 1982 until 1990 he was Vice President of Computing Services at Health Systems International in New Haven, Connecticut.
Stevens' RFCs covered updates to the Berkeley sockets API for IPv6, as well as a standard method of congestion control for TCP sessions.