Sir Tim Berners-Lee

Sir Tim Berners‑Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989 while at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory. He wrote the first web client and server in 1990 and specified the core technologies (URIs, HTTP, HTML) that underpin the web. Prior to this, he worked on distributed transaction systems at Plessey Telecommunications Ltd, wrote typesetting software at D.G. Nash Ltd, and developed the conceptual forerunner of the web, “Enquire,” during a six‑month consultancy at CERN in 1980.

He founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in 1994 and served as its director until becoming emeritus director. He holds the title of Emeritus 3Com Founders Professor of Engineering at MIT and is a professorial research fellow at the University of Oxford. Berners‑Lee also co‑founded the World Wide Web Foundation in 2009, advocating for an open and accessible web.

Currently, Berners‑Lee is co‑founder and CTO of Inrupt, a company commercialising the Solid platform, which aims to decentralise web data control and give individuals ownership of their personal data. He is also president and co‑founder of the Open Data Institute, promoting open data practices globally.

He has received numerous honours including a knighthood (2004), the Order of Merit (2007), the ACM Turing Award (2016), and the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering (2013). His work continues to shape the evolution of the web towards greater privacy and user empowerment.