Internet Society Announces New Internet Hall of Fame Inductees

2025 inductees from diverse backgrounds, disciplines, and geographies have made a significant and indelible mark on the Internet

Ceremony honoring inductees to be held today

WASHINGTON, Sept. 17, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- The Internet Society today announced the induction of eight Internet visionaries into the Internet Hall of Fame, recognizing their lasting contributions to the development, expansion, and governance of the global Internet. Together, their work has spanned decades and enabled the Internet to cross borders, languages, and cultures—ultimately connecting billions of people worldwide.

2025 Internet Hall of Fame Inductees:
Ram Mohan – Champion of Universal Access, who helped transition the Internet from ASCII to Unicode, enabling billions of non-English speakers to use their native languages online. His groundbreaking work with Arab language experts established the foundation for multilingual Internet access.

Hyunje Park – Among the first TCP/IP engineers outside the US, Park registered the first Korean IP address in 1986 and developed Asia's first IPv4 network. Despite the 1997 Asian financial crisis threatening his broadband project, Park successfully brought high-speed Internet to Korea in just eight months.

Kirk Lougheed –Co-creator of the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) which he sketched on two napkins during a 1989 lunch meeting. Known as the "postal service of the Internet," BGP solved critical routing challenges that enabled the Internet to scale from a few networks to billions of interconnected systems today.

Dong Liu –Advocate for Internet infrastructure advancement. His career focused on enhancing the Internet's capacity, particularly through global IPv6 deployment, establishing the world's largest IPv6 testing laboratory and first IPv6 public DNS resolver. His work on IPv6 enables more mobile devices, smart home appliances, cloud applications, and artificial intelligence services to access the Internet quickly, conveniently, and affordably.

Patrik Fältström – Pioneer of Internet interoperability whose work enables seamless communication across devices and languages. He made it possible to use special characters—like the Swedish ä, ö, å—in domain names, email addresses, and URLs through his work on Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs). His contributions include email attachment standards that allow files to be sent between different computer systems.

John S. Quarterman – The "Internet Cartographer" who documented the early Internet's explosive growth through seminal books and detailed network maps. His 1994 "Matrix Maps" reportedly inspired Jeff Bezos to launch Amazon and helped leaders understand the Internet's transformative potential.

Dr. Tarek Kamel (posthumous, 2019)—Known as the "Father of the Internet" in Egypt, he brought Internet access to Egypt, which served as a gateway for neighboring Arab countries to connect to the early Internet. Kamel pioneered the multistakeholder approach to Internet governance, bringing together government, industry, and academic representatives to shape Egypt's digital future.

Joyce Reynolds (posthumous, 2015) – Helped shape the Request for Comments (RFC) system into the foundational documentation system of the Internet. RFCs have been used to solve technical problems and are shared with other engineers to use. They underpin every email, every attachment, and every video call made. The 9,000+ RFCs that document Internet standards and history exist in their current form largely due to her organizational work.

"These Internet pioneers sparked new ideas and persevered even when the conditions were unfavorable to them. They didn't just create protocols and standards; they created a culture of open innovation where the next great idea could come from anyone, anywhere in the world," said Sally Wentworth, President & CEO of the Internet Society. "The work of these inductees reminds us that the Internet's strength comes not from any single innovation, but from the collaborative spirit that embodies the Internet, where anyone can contribute, innovate, and help build a better connected world."

The inductees will be honored during an online ceremony on 17 September 2025.

About the Internet Hall of Fame:
The Internet Hall of Fame recognizes individuals who have made exceptional contributions to the development and advancement of the Internet. Inductees are selected for their pioneering technical contributions, leadership in Internet development, and significant impact on the Internet.

About the Internet Society:
Founded in 1992 by Internet pioneers, the Internet Society is a global charitable organization working to ensure that the Internet is for everyone. Through its community of members, special interest groups, and 130+ chapters around the world, the organization defends and promotes Internet policies and technologies that keep the Internet open, globally connected, and secure.

SOURCE Internet Society Foundation