Sir Timothy Berners-Lee is a British computer scientist who invented the World Wide Web. He received a knighthood from the British Queen for his efforts (so he is called ‘Sir’). He is director of W3C, which looks after the Web’s development. A leading British newspaper ranked him as the world’s greatest living genius. Today’s world would be very different without his discovery.

 

Berners-Lee was born in 1955 to parents who were mathematicians and computer scientists. He grew up with numbers and electronics and managed to build his own computer. He went to Oxford University and was banned from using the computers for hacking. Berners-Lee graduated with a degree in physics. His first jobs after graduating were as a computer programmer and software developer.

 

Berners-Lee spent the 1980s on a project based on sharing and updating information online. In 1991, he put the first website online. It explained what the World Wide Web was and how it was used. He gave his idea to the world for free. In 1994, Berners-Lee founded W3C to set standards and improve the quality of the Web.

 

Berners-Lee now spends his time between W3C and as a professor of computer science in England. He also writes about the future of the Web. In 2004, he was named as the first ever winner of the Millennium Technology Prize. He has a string of other awards and is listed as one of ‘Time’ magazine’s 100 most important people of the 20th Century.