TIM BERNERS-LEE
ABOUT
Born: June 8, 1955, London
Died: Still alive: Age 60+
Education: The Queen's College, Oxford (1973–1976), Emanuel School(1969–1973)
Spouse: Rosemary Leith (m. 2014)
Siblings: Alice Berners-Lee, Ben Berners-Lee
Claim to fame: Inventor of the "world wide web" (www.***********)
Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989. He founded and Directs the World Wide Consortium (W3C), the forum for technical development of the Web. He founded the Web Foundation whose mission is that the WWW serves Humanity, and co-founded the Open Data Institute in London. His research group at MIT's Computer Science and AI Lab ("CSAIL") plans to re-decentralize the Web. Tim spends a lot of time fighting for rights such as privacy, freedom and openness of the Web.
A graduate of Oxford University, Tim Berners-Lee invented the Web while at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory, in 1989. He wrote the first web client and server in 1990. His specifications of URIs, HTTP and HTML were refined as Web technology spread.
He is the 3Com Founders Professor of Engineering in the School of Engineering with a joint appointment in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Laboratory for Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence ( CSAIL) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he also heads the Decentralized Information Group (DIG). He is also a Professor in the Electronics and Computer Science Department at the University of Southampton, UK.
Tim is the Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), a Web standards organization founded in 1994 which develops interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) to lead the Web to its full potential. He is a Director of the World Wide Web Foundation which was launched in 2009 to coordinate efforts to further the potential of the Web to benefit others.
In 2011 he was named to the Board of Trustees of the Ford Foundation, a globally oriented private foundation with the mission of advancing human welfare. He has promoted open government data globally and is a member of the UK's Transparency Board. He is President of London's Open Data Institute.
In 2001 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. He has been the recipient of several international awards including the Japan Prize, the Prince of Asturias Foundation Prize, the Millennium Technology Prize and Germany's Die Quadriga award. In 2004 he was knighted by H.M. Queen Elizabeth and in 2007 he was awarded the Order of Merit. In 2009 he was elected a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences.
On March 18 2013, Tim, along with Vinton Cerf, Robert Kahn, Louis Pouzin and Marc Andreesen, was awarded the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering for "ground-breaking innovation in engineering that has been of global benefit to humanity."
Quotes
Alongside many other pioneers and famous figures, TimBL is noted for his quotes that have inspired people and given many businesses the help that they need to become better.
Anyone who has lost track of time when using a computer knows the propensity to dream, the urge to make dreams come true and the tendency to miss lunch.
Web users ultimately want to get at data quickly and easily. They don't care as much about attractive sites and pretty design.
Sites need to be able to interact in one single, universal space.
Intellectual property is an important legal and cultural issue. Society as a whole has complex issues to face here: private ownership vs. open source, and so on.
You affect the world by what you browse.
The Web as I envisaged it, we have not seen it yet. The future is still so much bigger than the past.
The Web is now philosophical engineering. Physics and the Web are both about the relationship between the small and the large.
FACTS
Just a few fun facts about Tim Berners-Lee.
Time Berners-Lee made the first communication between an HTTP (Hypertest Transfer Protocol) client and server through the internet in November 1989. He invented the World Wide Web.
He received a knighthood in 2004 from Queen Elizabeth II.
He is the director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) a group set up to oversee the development of the World Wide Web.
He was honoured during the opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.
He was born on 8th June 1955 in London.
In 2001, Tim Berners-Lee became a Fellow of the Royal Society.
He was a very keen trainspotter when he was a child and he enjoyed playing with model railways.
He has admitted that the pair of slashes (//) in web addresses ended up being unnecessary. He said he could have designed URLs without them, but didn’t realise at the time.
He was one of Time Magazine’s ‘100 Most Important People of the 20th Century’.
He is sometimes referred to as TimBL.