Louis Pouzin (born April 20, 1931) is a French computer scientist and an early contributor to the development of the Internet. In the early 1970s, he led the creation of the CYCLADES computer network in France. This network used a new method for sending data in small pieces called packets. He was the first to apply the end-to-end principle in a large network, an idea that became essential to how the Internet is designed.

The CYCLADES network was the first to use the pure datagram model. This model was first proposed by Donald Davies and later named by Halvor Bothner-By. Louis Pouzin believed this model was his own idea. His work, along with that of his colleagues Hubert Zimmerman and Gérard Le Lann, was recognized by Vinton Cerf as important to the development of TCP/IP, the set of rules that the Internet uses to send and receive data.

Biography

Louis Pouzin was born on April 20, 1931, in Chantenay-Saint-Imbert, Nièvre, France. He studied at the École Polytechnique from 1950 to 1952.

Pouzin worked on the design of the Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS) at MIT. Around 1963–64, he created a program for CTSS called RUNCOM. This program allowed users to run commands stored in a folder and is considered the early version of the command-line interface and shell scripts. Pouzin also created the term "shell" to describe a program that helps users give commands to a computer, separate from the main part of the system. His ideas were later used in the Multics system by Glenda Schroeder at MIT. Schroeder developed the first Multics shell with help from an unnamed person at General Electric. This shell became the basis for the Unix shell, which is still used today.

Pouzin worked with Glenda Schroeder and Pat Crisman to design an early email system called "MAIL." This system let CTSS users send messages to others about file backups. Each user’s messages were stored in a file named "MAIL BOX," which only the user could read or delete. The system was used to notify users about backups, share information among CTSS developers, and communicate with the CTSS manual editor. At the time, the system only allowed messages to be sent between users on the same computer. The idea of sending messages between computers came later, in 1971, when Ray Tomlinson developed it.

From 1967 to 1969, Pouzin created an operating system for Météo-France, the French weather service. The system used CDC 6400 hardware and was used for weather forecasts and statistics for 15 years.

Between 1971 and 1976, Pouzin led the CYCLADES networking project at IRIA. He built the CIGALE packet switching network to study how different computer networks could connect. CYCLADES used a layered system for communication, similar to how the Internet works today.

In 1972, Pouzin helped start the International Network Working Group during a computer networking conference in Paris. He played a key role in developing ideas for the group. Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf, who wrote a major paper on internet protocols in 1974, acknowledged Pouzin’s contributions.

In 2002, Pouzin joined Jean-Louis Grangé, Jean-Pierre Henninot, and Jean-François Morfin to create Eurolinc, a group that promotes using many languages in internet domain names. In 2003, Eurolinc was approved by the United Nations to take part in the World Summit on the Information Society.

In 2011, Pouzin started a company called Savoir-Faire with Chantal Lebrument and Quentin Perrigueur. In 2012, he launched a service called Open-Root, which sells top-level domains in many languages outside of ICANN. This allows people to create free second-level domains.

Awards

• 1997 – Pouzin received the ACM SIGCOMM Award for early work in developing a way to send data without needing a direct connection.
• 2003 – Louis Pouzin was named a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor by the French government on March 19, 2003.
• 2012 – Pouzin was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame by the Internet Society.
• 2013 – Pouzin was one of five Internet and Web pioneers awarded the inaugural Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering.
• 2016 – Pouzin received the Global IT Award.
• 2018 – Pouzin was promoted to Officer of the Legion of Honor.