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 Tim
Berners-Lee
Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
Background
Tim Berners-Lee graduated from the Queen's College at
Oxford University, England, 1976. Whilst there he built his first computer
with a soldering iron, TTL gates, an M6800 processor and an old television.
He spent two years with Plessey Telecommunications Ltd (Poole, Dorset,
UK) a major UK Telecom equipment manufacturer, working on distributed
transaction systems, message relays, and bar code technology.
In 1978 Tim left Plessey to join D.G Nash Ltd (Ferndown, Dorset, UK),
where he wrote among other things typesetting software for intelligent
printers, and a multitasking operating system.
A year and a half spent as an independent consultant included a six month stint
(Jun-Dec 1980)as consultant software engineer at CERN, the European Particle Physics
Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland. Whilst there, he wrote for his own
private use his first program for storing information including using
random associations. Named "Enquire", and never published, this program
formed the conceptual basis for the future development of the World Wide
Web.
From 1981 until 1984, Tim worked at John Poole's Image Computer Systems
Ltd, with technical design responsibility. Work here included real time
control firmware, graphics and communications software, and a generic macro
language. In 1984, he took up a fellowship at CERN, to work on distributed
real-time systems for scientific data acquisition and system control. Among
other things, he worked on FASTBUS system software and designed a
heterogeneous remote procedure call system.
In 1989, he proposed a global hypertext project, to be known as the World
Wide Web. Based on the earlier "Enquire" work, it was designed to allow
people to work together by combining their knowledge in a web of hypertext
documents. He wrote the first World Wide Web server, "httpd", and the
first client, "WorldWideWeb" a what-you-see-is-what-you-get hypertext
browser/editor which ran in the NeXTStep environment. This work was started
in October 1990, and the program "WorldWideWeb" first made available within
CERN in December, and on the Internet at large in the summer of 1991.
Through 1991 and 1993, Tim continued working on the design of the Web,
coordinating feedback from users across the Internet. His initial
specifications of URIs, HTTP and HTML were refined and discussed in larger
circles as the Web technology spread.
In 1994, Tim founded the
World Wide Web Consortium at the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS)
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Since that time he has served
as the Director of the World Wide Web Consortium which coordinates Web
development worldwide, with teams at MIT, at INRIA
in France, and at Keio University in Japan. The Consortium takes as its
goal to lead the Web to its full potential, ensuring its stability through
rapid evolution and revolutionary transformations of its usage. The Consortium
may be found at http://www.w3.org/.
In 1999, he became the first holder of the 3Com Founders chair at LCS, and
is now a Senior Research Scientist within the Lab.
He is the author of "Weaving the Web", on the the past present and future of
the Web.
Awards
In 1995, Tim Berners-Lee received the Kilby Foundation's "Young Innovator
of the Year" Award, and an honorary Prix
Ars Electronica, and was corecipient of the ACM Software
Systems Award. He was the recipient of the 1996 ACM Kobayashi award, the
IEEE evolution and revolutionary transformations of its usage. The Consortium
may Computers and Communication (C&C) award. In 1997 he was awarded
the Duddell
Medal of the Institute of Physics, the Interactive Services
Association's Distinguished Service Award, the MCI Computerworld/Smithsonian Award
for Leadership in Innovation, The International Communication Institute's
Columbus Prize, and an OBE. In 1998, he received the Charles Babbage award,
the Mountbatten Medal of the National Electronics Council, the Lord Lloyd
of Kilgerran Prize from the Foundation for Science and Technology, PC
Magazine Lifetime Achievement Award in Technical Excellence, a MacArthur
Fellowship and The Eduard
Rhein technology award. In 1999, Time magazine dubbed him one of the
100 greatest minds of the century and he received a World Technology Award
for Communication Technology, and an Honorary Fellowship to the Society
for Technical Communications. In 2000, he received the Paul Evan Peters
Award of ARL, Educause and CNI, the Electronic
Freedom Foundation's pioneer award, and the George R Stibitz
Computer Pioneer award at the American
Computer Museum, and the Special Award
for Outstanding Contribution of the World Television Forum.In
2001 he received the Sir
Frank Whittle Medal from the Royal Academy of Engineering. In 2002
he will be the recipient of the
Japan Award from the
Science and Technology Foundation of Japan.
He has honorary degrees from the Parsons School of Design, New
York (D.F.A., 1996) , Southampton
University (D.Sc., 1996), Essex University (D.U., 1998) Southern Cross University (1998),
the Open University (D.U., 2000),
Columbia University
(D.Law, 2001) and Oxford University (2001). He is a Distinguished Fellow
of the British Computer Society, and
a Honorary Fellow of the Institution
of Electrical Engineers., a member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Fellow of the Royal Society (2001).
Publications
Berners-Lee, T.J., et al, "World-Wide Web: Information Universe",
Electronic Publishing: Research, Applications and Policy, April
1992.
Berners-Lee T.J., et al, "The World Wide Web", Communications of the
ACM, August 1994.
Tim Berners-Lee with Mark Fischetti, Weaving the Web, Harper San Francisco,
1999
Education
The Queen's College,
Oxford University, England, BA Hons (I) Physics, 1973-1976.
Emanuel School, London
1969-73
Born London, England, 8 June 1955
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