[ih] More sad news

[John Day]

I was notified this morning of the passing of André Danthine, at the University of Liege, a long time network researcher and member of the original network traveling circus, as they called it.  ;-)

It is with great sadness that I must inform you of the passing of Prof. André Danthine this January 18th, at the age of 91.

André was an electromechanical engineer (1959) from the University of Liège, Belgium, and Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from MIT (1961). After a few years spent in industry, he started his academic career in 1967 at the University of Liège, holding the chair in automatic control. In 1972, after witnessing the first public Arpanet demonstration, he launched the research group in Computer Networking at the University of Liège, and connected to the Internet pioneers Louis Pouzin, Vint Cerf and Bob Metcalfe, among others. In 1978 he organized in Liège the first conference on Computer Network Protocols, which became the IFIP WG 6.1 PSTV conference in 1981. In 1983, he was the coordinator of one of the first 13 European ESPRIT projects. He retired on September 30, 1997, and in 2000 he received the ACM SIGCOMM award for "Basic contributions to protocol design and modeling, and for leadership in the development of computer networking in Europe".

André was an active member of our scientific community through his involvement in conferences and international research projects. Within IFIP he chaired TC6 from 1980 to 1985, and was the Belgian TC6 representative until 2004. He was also an early member of IFIP WG6.1 and IFIP WG6.2.

He had a strong, enthusiastic and endearing personality, and left his mark on generations of students and numerous researchers, including me as he was my PhD advisor and an inspiring leader at the beginning of my career. I owe him a lot, and I will miss him.

More details about his career can be found in the interview he gave to Andrew L. Russell in 2012:
https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/162412/oh428ad.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y

If you wish to express condolences, you can use the following link (in French):
https://www.dansnospensees.be/avis-de-deces/deces-detail/18-01-2024/andre-danthine

Take care,
John Day