Hubert Zimmermann

Hubert Zimmermann (1941 – November 9, 2012) was a French software engineer and a pioneer of computer networking.

Zimmermann was educated at Ecole Polytechnique and Ecole Nationale Superieure des Telecom. His career began at Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et Automatique (INRIA) in Rocquencourt from 1972 through 1979, where he led research into what became ChorusOS series of distributed operating systems. In 1977, he was an early member of the International Organization for Standardization as it developed the Open Systems Interconnection protocols. He then worked for France Telecom in 1980 through 1986. He developed and promoted the OSI reference model which became a popular way to describe network protocols, and published a paper on the model in 1980 and one with John Day in 1983. He founded Chorus systems in 1987, purchased by Sun Microsystems in 1997, where he was director of telecom software engineering for 5 years. Then he invested in entrepreneurial high-tech companies such as Arbor Venture Management, Boost Your StartUp, Gingko Networks and UDcast.

In 1991, Zimmermann was awarded the SIGCOMM Award for "20 years of leadership in the development of computer networking and the advancement of international standardization".

A 2011 article in the Anecdotes section of IEEE Annals of the History of Computing documents his view of the early history of the Internet protocol suite.

On 9 November 2012, Zimmermann died in France.