Louis Pouzin was born in 1931 in France. He invented the datagram (connectionless communication) and he is known as one of internet's fathers. He graduated from École Polytechnique in Paris.
Louis POUZIN has acquired an international reputation as an expert in computer communications and network techniques. Most of his career has been devoted to the design and implementation of computer systems, such as CTSS the first large time sharing system at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), or the French CYCLADES computer network and its datagram based packet switching network. His work was used by Robert Kahn, Vinton Cerf, and others in the development of TCP/IP protocols in the Internet.
Besides his capacity in leading teams of top professionals, he is known internationally for his participation in early network standardisation activities within IFIP, ISO and CCITT (now ITU-T), and his numerous publications, many of them have become educational material in network courses. As a lecturer, he is especially appreciated for presenting complex subjects in clear and understandable terms.
He has published more than 80 articles and a book on computer networks and received various awards. Among them: IFIP Silver Core, ACM SIGCOMM, IEEE Internet, ISOC Hall of Fame, and Chevalier of Légion d'Honneur. Louis was one of five Internet and Web pioneers awarded with the 1st Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering (QEPrize). The UK government initiated the QE Prize as a companion to the Nobels to raise the profile of engineering. On 25th June, 2013, he received his award from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace.
In 2012, he founded with Chantal Lebrument an alternative root company called Open-Root, offering a new business model for the management of top level domain names (TLD), independently from ICANN. TLDs are sold, not rented, and cannot be seized by the US FBI.
Still an activist in the field of internet governance, Louis is a regular in the World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS), on the side of an internet for people instead of transnational monopolies.