Louis Pouzin, At the early stages of Internet (1931 to present, Year of Entry: 1950)

Former École Polytechnique student Louis Pouzin changed the world. For his successes, he was awarded the 2013 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering. Back in the 1970s, this computer engineer invented the datagram, a technology that enabled data to be transmitted in packets. Developed as part of the French experimental research project, CYCLADES, his research was later used by Robert Kahn and Vint in the development of the Internet and the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. If CYCLADES had not been abandoned in 1978 due to a lack of state support, Pouzin might have gone on to invent the Internet. Today, he is trying to rebuild the Internet, by promoting multilingualism and alternative Internet governance.