Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. (born March 31, 1948) was the forty-fifth Vice President of the United States, serving from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. Gore previously served in the U. S. House of Representatives (1977–85) and the U. S. Senate (1985–93), representing Tennessee. He was the Democratic Party presidential nominee in the 2000 election, and shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for his work as an environmental activist. Gore has been involved with the development of the Internet since the 1970s, first as a Congressman and later as Senator and Vice-President. His High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991 (often referred to as the Gore Bill) was passed on December 9, 1991 and led to the National Information Infrastructure (NII) which Gore referred to as the "information superhighway." Leonard Kleinrock, a key player in the development of the ARPANET, considers the act to be a critical moment in Internet history. Internet pioneers Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn stated in the 2000 article "Al Gore and the Internet", that Gore was "the first political leader to recognize the importance of the Internet and to promote and support its development."