Biography
Personal Life & Legacy
Tim Berners-Lee: A Magna Carta for the web: Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web 25 years ago. So it’s worth a listen when he warns us: There’s a battle ahead. Eroding net neutrality, filter bubbles and centralized corporate control all threaten the web’s wide-open spaces. It’s up to users to fight for the right to access and openness. The question is, What kind of Internet do we want ?
Tim Berners-Lee is a British computer
scientist who invented the World Wide Web.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee is a British computer scientist who invented what is undoubtedly one of the most revolutionary inventions of the 20th century—the World Wide Web (WWW). A qualified software engineer who was working at CERN when he came up with the idea of a global network system, Sir Tim is also credited for creating the world’s first web browser and editor. He founded the World Wide Web Foundation and directs the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Both of his parents worked on the Ferranti Mark I, the first commercial computer, and thus it is not surprising that he too chose the field of computers. But what is surprising is the phenomenal impact his idea of a global network has had on the world of information and technology. An alumnus of the University of Oxford, he realized the need for a global communication network while working at CERN as the researchers from all over the world needed to share their data with each other. By the late 1980s he had drawn up a proposal for creating a global hypertext document system using the internet. A few more years of pioneering work in the field led to the birth of the World Wide Web making Berners-Lee one of the most significant inventors of the modern era.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee is a British computer scientist who invented what is undoubtedly one of the most revolutionary inventions of the 20th century—the World Wide Web (WWW). A qualified software engineer who was working at CERN when he came up with the idea of a global network system, Sir Tim is also credited for creating the world’s first web browser and editor. He founded the World Wide Web Foundation and directs the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Both of his parents worked on the Ferranti Mark I, the first commercial computer, and thus it is not surprising that he too chose the field of computers. But what is surprising is the phenomenal impact his idea of a global network has had on the world of information and technology. An alumnus of the University of Oxford, he realized the need for a global communication network while working at CERN as the researchers from all over the world needed to share their data with each other. By the late 1980s he had drawn up a proposal for creating a global hypertext document system using the internet. A few more years of pioneering work in the field led to the birth of the World Wide Web making Berners-Lee one of the most significant inventors of the modern era.
Tim Berners-Lee
Childhood & Early Life
- He was born on
June 8, 1955, as Timothy Berners-Lee to Mary Lee Woods and Conway
Berners-Lee. He has three siblings. Both his parents worked on the first
commercially-built computer, the Ferranti Mark I and thus Tim was
fascinated by computers from a young age.
- He received his
primary education from Sheen Mount Primary School before moving on to
London's independent Emanuel School where he studied from 1969 to 1973.
- He enrolled at
The Queen’s College of the University of Oxford in 1973 and graduated in
1976 with a first-class degree in physics.
Tim Berners-Lee
Career
- He was
appointed as an engineer at the telecommunications company, Plessey in
Poole after completing his studies. He remained there for two years,
working on distributed transaction systems, message relays, and bar code
technology.
- He left Plessey
in 1978 and joined D. G. Nash Ltd. In this job he wrote typesetting
software for intelligent printers and a multitasking operating system.
- In the late
1970s he began working as an independent consultant and worked for many
companies, including CERN where he worked from June to December 1980 as a
consultant software engineer.
- While at CERN
he wrote a program called “Enquire” for his own personal use. It was a
simple hypertext program which laid the conceptual foundation for the
development of the World Wide Web in future.
- He started
working at John Poole’s Image Computer Systems, Ltd. in 1981. For the next
three years he worked on the company’s technical side which enabled him to
gain experience in computer networking. His work included real time
control firmware, graphics and communications software, and a generic
macro language.
- He returned to
CERN in 1984 after receiving a fellowship there. During the 1980s
thousands of people were working at CERN and they needed to share
information and data with each other. Much of the work was done by email
and the scientists had to keep track of different things simultaneously.
Tim realized that a simpler and more efficient method of data sharing had
to be devised.
- In 1989, he
wrote a proposal for a more effective communication system within the
organization which eventually led to the conceptualization of the World
Wide Web—an information sharing system that could be implemented
throughout the world.
- The world’s
first ever website, Info.cern.ch, was built at CERN and put online on 6th
August 1991, ushering in a new era in the field of communication and
technology. The site provided information of what the World Wide Web was
and how it could be used for information sharing.
- He established
the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology’s Laboratory for Computer Science in 1994. The W3C decided that
its technologies should be royalty-free so that anyone could adopt them.
- He became a
professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of
Southampton, UK, in December 2004. There he worked on the Semantic Web.
- In 2006, he
became the Co-Director of the Web Science Trust which was launched to
analyze the World Wide Web and devise solutions to optimize its usage and
design. He also serves as the Director of the World Wide Web Foundation,
started in 2009.
- Along with Professor Nigel Shadbolt, he is one of the key figures behind data.gov.uk, a UK Government project to make non-personal UK government data more accessible to the public.
Major Works
- His invention, the World Wide Web, is counted among the most significant inventions of the 20th century. The web revolutionized the world of information and technology and has opened up several new avenues.
Tim Berners-Lee, In Australia.
Awards & Achievements
- He was presented
with The Software System Award from the Association for Computing
Machinery (ACM) in 1995.
- He was named as
one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th century by the Time
Magazine in 1999.
- He was made the
Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) in the New Year Honours
"for services to the global development of the Internet" in
2004.
- In 2013, he
became one of five Internet and Web pioneers awarded the inaugural Queen
Elizabeth Prize for Engineering.
Personal Life & Legacy
- He met Jane
while studying physics at Oxford and married her soon after graduation in
1976. This marriage, however, ended in a divorce.
- While working
for CERN he became acquainted with Nancy, an American software engineer.
They so fell in love and tied the knot in 1990. This marriage too ended
after some years.
- Currently he is
married to Rosemary Leith who he wed in June 2014.
Quick Facts
Also Known As
Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee
Famous as
Inventor of the World Wide Web
Nationality
Born on
08 June 1955 AD
Birthday
Century
Age
61 Years
Sun Sign
Born in
London
Personality Type
Visionary
father
Conway Berners-Lee
mother
Mary Lee Woods
Spouse/Partner:
Rosemary Leith
education
1976 - The Queen's College
Oxford
1973 - Emanuel School
Oxford
1973 - Emanuel School
Founder/Co-Founder
World Wide Web Consortium, World Wide Web
Foundation
discoveries / inventions
World Wide Web,
Hypertext Transfer Protocol, HTML, Web Browser
Tim Berners-Lee's Album
Falderal
The inventor of
the World Wide Web and one of Time Magazine’s ‘100 Most Important People of the
20th Century’, Sir Tim Berners-Lee is a scientist and academic whose visionary
and innovative work has transformed almost every aspect of our lives.
Having invented the Web in 1989
while working at CERN and subsequently working to ensure it was made freely
available to all, Berners-Lee is now dedicated to enhancing and protecting the
Web’s future. He is a Founding Director of the World Wide Web Foundation, which
seeks to ensure the Web serves humanity by establishing it as a global public
good and a basic right. He is also Director of the World Wide Web Consortium, a global Web
standards organization he founded in 1994 to lead the Web to its full potential.
In 2012 he co-founded the Open Data Institute (ODI) which advocates for Open Data in
the UK and globally. Sir Tim has advised a number of governments and
corporations on ongoing digital strategies. A graduate of Oxford University,
Sir Tim presently holds academic posts at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology at CSAIL (Computer Science and Artificial
Intelligence Lab), (USA) and the University of Southampton (UK.)
Sir Tim has
received multiple accolades in recent years. These include receiving the first
Queen’ Elizabeth Prize for Engineering in 2013, election as a Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009 and being knighted by H.M. Queen
Elizabeth in 2004. He has received over 10 honorary doctorates, is a member of
the Internet Hall of Fame, and was awarded the Finland Millennium Prize in
2004. In 2007, Berners-Lee was awarded the UK’s Order of Merit – a personal
gift of the monarch limited to just 24 living recipients. In 2012, he played a
starring role in the opening ceremony for the Olympics, where, in front of an
audience of some 900 million, he tweeted: “This is for everyone”.