Background
Tim Berners-Lee was born on June 8, 1955 in London, England, United Kingdom. He the eldest of the four children of Conway Berners-Lee and Mary Lee Woods. Both of his parents were computer scientists.
W Temple Sheen, London SW14 7RT, United Kingdom
Tim Berners-Lee attended Sheen Mount Primary School.
Battersea Rise, London, SW11 1HS England, United Kingdom
From 1969 to 1973 Tim Berners-Lee attended south west London's Emanuel School.
High St, Oxford OX1 4AW, United Kingdom
Tin Berners-Lee studied at the Queen's College, Oxford, from 1973 to 1976, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics.
1998
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
Portrait of British computer scientist and engineer Tim Berners-Lee as he poses in a classroom at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, Massachusetts, on March 23, 1998. Photo by Karjean Levine
2002
Oviedo, Spain
(L-R) Internet pioneers Vinton Cerf, Lawrence Roberts, Robert Kahn, Vinton Cerf and Tim Berners-Lee attend a media conference the day before they receive the Prince of Asturias award for Science and Technology investigation October 24, 2002 in Oviedo, Spain. Photo by Carlos Alvarez
2007
Buckingham Palace, London, United Kingdom
Queen Elizabeth II (front, centre) with members of the Order of Merit (front row left to right) Professor Sir Roger Penrose, Lord Foster of Thames Bank, the Revd. Professor Owen Chadwick, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince of Wales, Sir Michael Atiyah, Sir Anthony Caro, Sir Tom Stoppard (back row, left to right) Neil MacGregor, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Lord Eames, Sir David Attenborough, Lord Rothschild, Lord May of Oxford, Baroness Boothroyd, Professor Sir Michael Howard, Lord Rees of Ludlow, the Right Honourable Jean Chretien, David Hockney and Lord Fellowes, in the Music Room, at Buckingham Palace, central London. Photo by Dominic Lipinski
2010
London, United Kingdom
World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee speaks at the Nokia World event on September 15, 2010.
2012
Olympic Stadium, London, United Kingdom
Lights around the stadium read 'This is for Everyone' in relation to Sir Tim Berners-Lee invention, the world wide web, during the London Olympic Games 2012 Opening Ceremony at the Olympic Stadium, London. Photo by Martin Rickett
2012
Olympic Stadium, London, United Kingdom
Inventor of the World Wide Web Sir Tim Berners-Lee applauds during the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games at the Olympic Stadium on July 27, 2012 in London, England. Photo by Ryan Pierse
2012
House of Lords, London, England, United Kingdom
Founder of the World Wide Web Sir Tim Berners-Lee speaks at the DNA (Decide Now Act) Summit Innovation 101 Power Breakfast in the Cholmondeley Room & Terrace at the House of Lords on July 26, 2012 in London, England. Photo by Dave M. Benett
2012
House of Lords, London, England, United Kingdom
Founder of the World Wide Web Sir Tim Berners-Lee (C) with his children Alice Berner-Lee and Ben Berners-Lee attend the DNA (Decide Now Act) Summit Innovation 101 Power Breakfast in the Cholmondeley Room & Terrace at the House of Lords on July 26, 2012 in London, England. Photo by Dave M. Benett
2013
Geneva, Switzerland
The inventor of the "World Wide Web" Tim Berners-Lee speaks during a press conference with UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay (not pictured) at the United Nations offices in Geneva, Switzerland on December 5, 2013. Photo by Murat Unlu
2013
Austin Convention Center, Austin, Texas, United States
Scientist Tim Berners-Lee speaks onstage at the Open Web Platform: Hopes & Fears during the 2013 SXSW Music, Film + Interactive Festival at Austin Convention Center on March 9, 2013 in Austin, Texas. Photo by Amy E. Price
2013
Buckingham Palace, London, United Kingdom
Queen Elizabeth II makes a speech watched by (L-R) Vint Cerf, Robert Khan, Tim Berners-Lee and Louis Pouzin with their awards at a reception to mark the inaugural Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering at Buckingham Palace on June 25, 2013 in London, England. Photo by Lewis Whyld
2013
Buckingham Palace, London, England, United Kingdom
(L-R) Prime Minister David Cameron speaks with inventor Tim Berners-Lee at a reception to mark the inaugural Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering at Buckingham Palace on June 25, 2013 in London, England. Photo by Lewis Whyld
2013
Stata Center at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
Sir Timothy John "Tim" Berners-Lee, Director of the World Wide Web Consortium, the founder of the World Wide Web Foundation, a senior researcher and a holder of the Founders Chair at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), photographed in his office at the Stata Center at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 21, 2013. Photo by Rick Friedman
2014
Paris, France
Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee (R) speaks with conference founder Loic LeMeur (L) at the 'LeWeb' internet conference in Paris, France, 10 December 2014. Photo by Andrej Sokolow
2014
New York City, New York, United States
Computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee speaks onstage at the 18th Annual Webby Awards on May 19, 2014 in New York City. Photo by Bryan Bedder
2014
New York, United States
Inventor of the World Wide Web Tim Bernsers-Lee and his family attend 18th Annual Webby Awards on May 19, 2014 in New York, United States. Photo by Brad Barket
2015
Cannes, France
Computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee attends the PHD Worldwide seminar as part of Cannes Lions International Festival of creativity on June 23, 2015. Photo by Francois G. Durand
2015
Cannes, France
Computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee attends the PHD Worldwide seminar as part of Cannes Lions International Festival of creativity on June 23, 2015 in Cannes, France. Photo by Francois G. Durand
2018
Lisbon
English scientist Tim Berners-Lee from the Web Foundation addresses the opening ceremony of the 2018 edition of the annual Web Summit technology conference in Lisbon on November 5, 2018. Photo by Rita Franca
2018
Lisbon
English scientist Tim Berners-Lee from the Web Foundation addresses the opening ceremony of the 2018 edition of the annual Web Summit technology conference in Lisbon on November 5, 2018. Photo by Rita Franca
1998
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
Portrait of British computer scientist and engineer Tim Berners-Lee as he poses in a classroom at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, Massachusetts, on March 23, 1998. Photo by Karjean Levine
2002
Oviedo, Spain
(L-R) Internet pioneers Vinton Cerf, Lawrence Roberts, Robert Kahn, Vinton Cerf and Tim Berners-Lee attend a media conference the day before they receive the Prince of Asturias award for Science and Technology investigation October 24, 2002 in Oviedo, Spain. Photo by Carlos Alvarez
2007
Buckingham Palace, London, United Kingdom
Queen Elizabeth II (front, centre) with members of the Order of Merit (front row left to right) Professor Sir Roger Penrose, Lord Foster of Thames Bank, the Revd. Professor Owen Chadwick, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince of Wales, Sir Michael Atiyah, Sir Anthony Caro, Sir Tom Stoppard (back row, left to right) Neil MacGregor, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Lord Eames, Sir David Attenborough, Lord Rothschild, Lord May of Oxford, Baroness Boothroyd, Professor Sir Michael Howard, Lord Rees of Ludlow, the Right Honourable Jean Chretien, David Hockney and Lord Fellowes, in the Music Room, at Buckingham Palace, central London. Photo by Dominic Lipinski
2010
London, United Kingdom
World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee speaks at the Nokia World event on September 15, 2010.
2012
Olympic Stadium, London, United Kingdom
Lights around the stadium read 'This is for Everyone' in relation to Sir Tim Berners-Lee invention, the world wide web, during the London Olympic Games 2012 Opening Ceremony at the Olympic Stadium, London. Photo by Martin Rickett
2012
Olympic Stadium, London, United Kingdom
Inventor of the World Wide Web Sir Tim Berners-Lee applauds during the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games at the Olympic Stadium on July 27, 2012 in London, England. Photo by Ryan Pierse
2012
House of Lords, London, England, United Kingdom
Founder of the World Wide Web Sir Tim Berners-Lee speaks at the DNA (Decide Now Act) Summit Innovation 101 Power Breakfast in the Cholmondeley Room & Terrace at the House of Lords on July 26, 2012 in London, England. Photo by Dave M. Benett
2012
House of Lords, London, England, United Kingdom
Founder of the World Wide Web Sir Tim Berners-Lee (C) with his children Alice Berner-Lee and Ben Berners-Lee attend the DNA (Decide Now Act) Summit Innovation 101 Power Breakfast in the Cholmondeley Room & Terrace at the House of Lords on July 26, 2012 in London, England. Photo by Dave M. Benett
2013
Geneva, Switzerland
The inventor of the "World Wide Web" Tim Berners-Lee speaks during a press conference with UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay (not pictured) at the United Nations offices in Geneva, Switzerland on December 5, 2013. Photo by Murat Unlu
2013
Austin Convention Center, Austin, Texas, United States
Scientist Tim Berners-Lee speaks onstage at the Open Web Platform: Hopes & Fears during the 2013 SXSW Music, Film + Interactive Festival at Austin Convention Center on March 9, 2013 in Austin, Texas. Photo by Amy E. Price
2013
Buckingham Palace, London, United Kingdom
Queen Elizabeth II makes a speech watched by (L-R) Vint Cerf, Robert Khan, Tim Berners-Lee and Louis Pouzin with their awards at a reception to mark the inaugural Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering at Buckingham Palace on June 25, 2013 in London, England. Photo by Lewis Whyld
2013
Buckingham Palace, London, England, United Kingdom
(L-R) Prime Minister David Cameron speaks with inventor Tim Berners-Lee at a reception to mark the inaugural Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering at Buckingham Palace on June 25, 2013 in London, England. Photo by Lewis Whyld
2013
Stata Center at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
Sir Timothy John "Tim" Berners-Lee, Director of the World Wide Web Consortium, the founder of the World Wide Web Foundation, a senior researcher and a holder of the Founders Chair at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), photographed in his office at the Stata Center at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 21, 2013. Photo by Rick Friedman
2014
Paris, France
Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee (R) speaks with conference founder Loic LeMeur (L) at the 'LeWeb' internet conference in Paris, France, 10 December 2014. Photo by Andrej Sokolow
2014
New York City, New York, United States
Computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee speaks onstage at the 18th Annual Webby Awards on May 19, 2014 in New York City. Photo by Bryan Bedder
2014
New York, United States
Inventor of the World Wide Web Tim Bernsers-Lee and his family attend 18th Annual Webby Awards on May 19, 2014 in New York, United States. Photo by Brad Barket
2015
Cannes, France
Computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee attends the PHD Worldwide seminar as part of Cannes Lions International Festival of creativity on June 23, 2015. Photo by Francois G. Durand
2015
Cannes, France
Computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee attends the PHD Worldwide seminar as part of Cannes Lions International Festival of creativity on June 23, 2015 in Cannes, France. Photo by Francois G. Durand
2018
Lisbon
English scientist Tim Berners-Lee from the Web Foundation addresses the opening ceremony of the 2018 edition of the annual Web Summit technology conference in Lisbon on November 5, 2018. Photo by Rita Franca
2018
Lisbon
English scientist Tim Berners-Lee from the Web Foundation addresses the opening ceremony of the 2018 edition of the annual Web Summit technology conference in Lisbon on November 5, 2018. Photo by Rita Franca
W Temple Sheen, London SW14 7RT, United Kingdom
Tim Berners-Lee attended Sheen Mount Primary School.
Battersea Rise, London, SW11 1HS England, United Kingdom
From 1969 to 1973 Tim Berners-Lee attended south west London's Emanuel School.
High St, Oxford OX1 4AW, United Kingdom
Tin Berners-Lee studied at the Queen's College, Oxford, from 1973 to 1976, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics.
(Named one of the greatest minds of the 20th century by Ti...)
Named one of the greatest minds of the 20th century by Time, Tim Berners-Lee is responsible for one of that century's most important advancements: the world wide web. Now, this low-profile genius-who never personally profitted from his invention -offers a compelling protrait of his invention. He reveals the Web's origins and the creation of the now ubiquitous http and www acronyms and shares his views on such critical issues as censorship, privacy, the increasing power of softeware companies , and the need to find the ideal balance between commercial and social forces. He offers insights into the true nature of the Web, showing readers how to use it to its fullest advantage. And he presents his own plan for the Web's future, calling for the active support and participation of programmers, computer manufacturers, and social organizations to manage and maintain this valuable resource so that it can remain a powerful force for social change and an outlet for individual creativity.
https://www.amazon.com/Weaving-Web-Original-Ultimate-Destiny/dp/006251587X/?tag=2022091-20
1999
educator engineer inventor scientist author
Tim Berners-Lee was born on June 8, 1955 in London, England, United Kingdom. He the eldest of the four children of Conway Berners-Lee and Mary Lee Woods. Both of his parents were computer scientists.
Tim Berners-Lee attended Sheen Mount Primary School, and then went on to attend south west London's Emanuel School from 1969 to 1973. He studied at the Queen's College, Oxford, from 1973 to 1976, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics.
Having made toy computers out of boxes as a toddler, Tim Berners-Lee made his first real com-puter while a student at Queen’s College at Oxford Uni-versity; his parts included an old television and an M6800 processor. After earning a physics degree in 1976, he worked for several companies in England before taking a six-month consulting job for the European particle physics laboratory, CERN, in 1980. This was where Berners-Lee created a software program called Enquire that linked documents in the lab’s information system. Its purpose was to help Berners-Lee master a vast amount of information in a short span of time. This memory aid was the theoretical basis for the software he later created and named the World Wide Web.
When Berners-Lee returned to CERN some years later, his Enquire program had been forgotten and the floppy disk it was stored on had been lost. Nevertheless, after the Internet was introduced in 1989, he suggested to his employer that Enquire could be expanded to link computer graphics, text, and video on a world-wide basis. Because CERN was not in the business of developing such projects, Berners-Lee worked on the software alone with the help of a powerful new NeXT computer approved by his boss. What he proceeded to do was harness the utility of the Internet (a network of wiring and software that had been devised by the Pentagon) with software for encoding, linking, and addressing documents. These are now known as URL, HTTP, and HTML protocols. One of the most remarkable aspects of Berners-Lee’s creation is that he used an existing device known as hypertext that linked information, but he freed it from a cumbersome need for a centralized database.
Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web went on the Internet in 1991, when the network had only some six hundred thousand users, mostly academics. It took some time, however, before the computer community understood the new medium. For example, because the Web was so different from the traditional definition of hypertext, the ACM Hypertext Conference excluded its creator from presenting a paper at their 1991 gathering. Five years later, however, some forty million users would be using the Web. This jump was due in part to the creation of browsers developed by others. The most important of these was Mosaic, later to became Netscape. Berners-Lee had designed his own browser for use on a NeXT computer; others had to write their own for use on Unix, Macintosh, IBM, and other machines.
The evolution of the World Wide Web software after 1991 continued in an unusual fashion. Berners-Lee gave it away by posting it on the Internet, where it could be accessed by anyone at no charge, and where others made suggestions for its improvement. Because of his vision for the World Wide Web, Berners-Lee carefully avoided the creation of competing, incompatible versions of the Web software. He chose not to market his software, bypassing all of the potential profits, because his goal was to keep the Web "vendor-neutral."
In 1994 Berners-Lee joined the Laboratory for Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) there, which became the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). In April, 1999, he became the first holder of the 3Com (Computer Communication Compatibility) Founders Chair laboratory at MIT, where he served as senior researcher. In 2008, he launched the World Wide Web Foundation, which campaigns to promote internet usage. In 2009, he was appointed by Prime Minister Gordon Brown to the United Kingdom's Public Sector Transparency Board to help advance the governments' transparency agenda. He continues to serve as director of W3C and the World Wide Web Foundation.
Tim Berners-Lee is famous as a creator of one of the most revolutionary inventions of the 20th century - the World Wide Web (WWW). In 1994 he became one of only six members of the World Wide Web Hall of Fame. In 1999 Time Magazine named him one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th century. Berners-Lee was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in the 2004 New Year Honours "for services to the global development of the internet".
In 2012 Berners-Lee was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame by the Internet Society. In 2013, he became one of five Internet and Web pioneers awarded the inaugural Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering. He has been conferred honorary degrees from a number of universities, including the University of Southampton, the University of Essex, the Technical University of Madrid, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, etc.
(Named one of the greatest minds of the 20th century by Ti...)
1999Tim Berners-Lee was raised as an Anglican, but in his youth, he turned away from religion. He has said: "Like many people, I had a religious upbringing which I rejected as a teenager: in my case it was a protestant Christian (Church of England) upbringing. I rejected it just after being "confirmed" and told how essential it was to believe in all kinds of unbelievable things. Since then I have discovered that many of the people around me who were "Christians" in fact used a sort of loose interpretation of some of that stuff, but it relieved a great tension just to say no. In fact, confirmation is when you say "yes", and well, we all make mistakes. In fact the need for the basis for Christian philosophy but without the dogma was a vacuum for many years."
He is a member of the Unitarian Universalist (UU) Church and appreciates the liberal, ecumenical approach of the church, which stresses the "the inherent dignity of people and in working together to achieve harmony and understanding."
Tim Berners-Lee advocated for a free and open web for the benefit of humanity. He also believes the next big thing will be the semantic Web, when machines can analyse the information online. It is the idea that computer programs will help humans to organise their lives and act as intelligent agents. In creating this semantic Web, new technologies are emerging.
He worries that the web may become a new cause of global inequality, rather than a positive force for mass collaboration. "The world’s urban poor and the illiterate are going to be increasingly disadvantaged and are in danger of being left behind. The web has added a new dimension to the gap between the first world and the developing world. We have to start talking about a human right to connect."
Quotations:
"We need diversity of thought in the world to face the new challenges."
"When you understand things, there's no more magic."
"You affect the world by what you browse."
"We can't blame the technology when we make mistakes."
Tim Berners-Lee is a foreign associate of the United States National Academy of Sciences.
Tim Berners-Lee likes to keep work and personal life separate.
In 1990 Berners-Lee married Nancy Carlson, an American computer programmer. They have two children, Alice and Ben, and divorced in 2011. In 2014 he married Rosemary Leith, a Canadian internet and banking entrepreneur.
