Tim Berners-Lee
Inventor of the World Wide Web
- Age
- 71 yrs
- Birthday in 215 days
- Works listed
- 4
- Proposal, Web browser
- Honours
- 4
- Most recent 2016
- Profile views
- 0
- 0 followers
Sir Tim Berners-Lee is an English computer scientist who invented the World Wide Web at CERN in 1989 and wrote the first web browser and server. He made the web free for everyone, founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and received the Turing Award in 2016.
Biography
Early life
Berners-Lee was born in London to two mathematicians who worked on the Ferranti Mark 1, one of the first commercial computers. He studied physics at The Queen’s College, Oxford, where he built a computer from an old television set.
Inventing the web
Working at CERN, the European physics laboratory in Geneva, he proposed in March 1989 an information system linking documents through hypertext over the internet. By the end of 1990 he had written HTML, the HTTP protocol, URLs, the first browser–editor (WorldWideWeb) and the first web server, at info.cern.ch.
A free web
In April 1993 CERN put the web software in the public domain at his urging, allowing the web to grow without licence fees. He founded the World Wide Web Consortium at MIT in 1994 to develop open standards, and later the World Wide Web Foundation and the Open Data Institute.
Recent work
Concerned about privacy and the concentration of power online, he co-founded Inrupt to develop Solid, a system that gives people control over their personal data. He was knighted in 2004, received the Turing Award in 2016 and published a memoir, This Is for Everyone, in 2025.
Timeline
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1955
Born in London, England
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1976
Graduates in physics from Oxford
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1980
First stint at CERN; writes ENQUIRE
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1989
Proposes the web at CERN
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1990
First browser and server
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1991
Web opened to the public
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1993
CERN releases the web royalty-free
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1994
Founds W3C
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2016
Turing Award
Notable works
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1989
Information Management: A Proposal Proposal
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1990
WorldWideWeb Web browser
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1999
Weaving the Web Book
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2025
This Is for Everyone Memoir
Awards and honours
-
Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire
2004
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Millennium Technology Prize
2004
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Order of Merit
2007
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Turing Award
2016
Did you know?
-
1
His manager wrote “Vague but exciting” on the original proposal.
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2
At the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony he tweeted “This is for everyone”.
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3
The first web server was a NeXT computer with a note saying “Do not power down”.
Connections
Related people
-
Robert Cailliau
Technology · Belgian engineer who co-developed the World Wide Web at CERN
Co-developer of the web at CERN
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Ted Nelson
Technology · Visionary who coined the words “hypertext” and “hypermedia”
Coined the term hypertext
-
Vint Cerf
Science · Co-designer of TCP/IP and one of the “fathers of the internet”
The web runs on TCP/IP
Frequently asked
Who is Tim Berners-Lee?
Sir Tim Berners-Lee is an English computer scientist who invented the World Wide Web at CERN in 1989 and wrote the first web browser and server. He made the web free for everyone, founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and received the Turing Award in 2016.
How old is Tim Berners-Lee?
Tim Berners-Lee is 71 years old, born on 8 June 1955 in London, England.
Where is Tim Berners-Lee from?
Tim Berners-Lee was born in London, England.
What is Tim Berners-Lee known for?
Tim Berners-Lee is best known for Inventing the World Wide Web, HTML, HTTP and URLs; founding the W3C; Turing Award 2016.
What awards has Tim Berners-Lee received?
Notable honours include Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (2004), Millennium Technology Prize (2004), Order of Merit (2007), Turing Award (2016).
References
- Tim Berners-Lee — Wikipedia. Wikipedia. Retrieved 4 November 2026.
- Tim Berners-Lee — Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved 4 November 2026.
- Tim Berners-Lee — IMDb. IMDb. Retrieved 4 November 2026.
- Tim Berners-Lee — Goodreads author page. Goodreads. Retrieved 4 November 2026.
- Tim Berners-Lee — Hindi Wikipedia. Wikipedia (Hindi). Retrieved 4 November 2026.
- Tim Berners-Lee (Q80) — structured data. Wikidata. Retrieved 4 November 2026.
Includes material from the Wikipedia article “Tim Berners-Lee”, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. That text is available under the same licence. Learn more
External links
About this profile
- Researched by the TrackFame editorial team; reviewed by Sanjay Sokal under our editorial policy
- First published 4 November 2026
- Last updated
Cite this page
“Tim Berners-Lee.” TrackFame, last updated 4 November 2026. https://trackfame.com/person/tim-berners-lee
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