Kauffman was valedictorian of his graduating class at Norwood Norfolk Central High School in 1962.

at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1966 and his Ph.D. in mathematics from Princeton University in 1972, with thesis Cyclic Branched-Covers, O(n)-Actions and Hypersurface Singularities written under the supervision of William Browder.

He writes a column entitled Virtual Logic for the journal Cybernetics and Human Knowing.

Kauffman's research interests are in the fields of cybernetics, topology, and mathematical physics.

The generators for the chain complex of the Khovanov homology are states of the bracket polynomial decorated with elements of a Frobenius algebra.

In 1994, Kauffman and Tom Etter wrote a draft proposal for a non-commutative discrete ordered calculus (DOC), which they presented in revised form in 1996.

[9] Louis H. Kauffman is author of several monographs on knot theory and mathematical physics.