Tim Berners-Lee

the man who invented the

World Wide Web

Born in London on 8 June 1955, Berners-Lee's education included Emanuel

School in Wandsworth, and later Queen's College, Oxford. At Oxford he majored
in physics and built his own computer out of spare parts. Berners-Lee was also
caught hacking during his stay at Oxford and banned from using the university's
computer.
After graduating from Oxford in 1976, Berners-Lee worked on various
programming projects before taking a position as a consultant/software engineer
for CERN, the European particle physics laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, in
1980. It was during his stint at CERN that Berners-Lee developed the first
prototype of the World Wide Web. Called Enquire, the program was designed to
help Berners-Lee keep track of the vast web of researchers and projects connected
with CERN.
Tim Berners-Lee, invented the software program known as the World Wide
Web in 1989, is a scientist in the true sense of the word--idealistic, interested in the
pure pursuit of knowledge, and uncomfortable in the media spotlight. Yet his
invention, which provides an easy way to access the Internet, has made a huge
impact on modern business and communications. Some experts claim that the
World Wide Web has revolutionized the ability of computer users around the
world to connect to each other.

Simply put, the Web provides a way to retrieve and access documents on the
Internet, the bare-bones network devised by the Pentagon that links computers
around the world. On the original Internet, there were no easy ways to retrieve
data. But Berners-Lee developed software that contained processes for encoding
documents (HTML, hypertext markup language), linking them (HTTP, hypertext
transfer protocol), and addressing them (URL, universal resource locator).
Documents could then be linked worldwide. He posted this software, free of
charge to anyone who wanted it, on the Internet.
Unlike Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Berners-Lee's contribution to the
World Wide Web did not lead to riches (although he did earn a couple of
handsome cash prizes along the way). Instead he remained committed to making
the web universally accessible, without patents or royalties due. To help ensure
that the Web remained a free and open entity, independent of any particular
government or corporation, he formed the World Wide Web Consortium in 1994.
The Consortium helps to mediate the aims and conflicts of companies involved in
the development of the Web and it also helps establish and promote standards and
protocols that work for both web designers and for web browsers.
Berners-Lee became the first holder of the 3Com Founders Chair at MIT,
where he is a senior research scientist. A Distinguished Fellow of the British
Computer Society and Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers, he is both a member of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences and a Fellow of the British Royal Society. Hailed by Time magazine as
one of the 100 greatest minds of this century, Berners-Lee -- or rather the Web
itself -- has radically transformed the way technologically literate nations do
business, entertain themselves, exchange news and ideas, and educate their
children.