MIT World Speakers

Tim Berners-Lee

A 1976 graduate of Oxford University, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, an internet-based hypermedia initiative for global information sharing. Today he leads the World Wide Web Consortium, an open forum of companies and organizations with the mission to lead the Web to its full potential. Berners-Lee wrote the first web client (browser-editor) and server in 1990 while working at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva, Before coming to CERN, Tim worked with Image Computer Systems, of Ferndown, Dorset, England and before that as a principal engineer with Plessey Telecommunications, in Poole, England. Tim Berners-Lee has received numerous honors, including a MacArthur Fellowship, the Charles Babbage award, the Electronic Freedom Foundation's pioneer award and the Japan Prize from the Science and Technology Foundation of Japan. In 2004 Tim was listed in the New Year’s honors list for a knighthood (KBE) for services to the global development of the Internet and was awarded the first Millennium Technology Prize. He was knighted by H.M. the Queen on 16th July, 2004.