News Release: W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee to be Knighted by Queen Elizabeth

Earlier today, Buckingham Palace announced that Tim Berners-Lee, the 
inventor of the World Wide Web and director of the World Wide Web 
Consortium (W3C), will be made a Knight Commander, Order of the British 
Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth. Remarks from Tim are included in the 
following announcement. For more information, contact Janet Daly, W3C 
Head of Communications, <janet@w3.org>, +1.617.253.5884 or +1.617.253.2613.

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W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee to be Knighted by Queen Elizabeth
Web Inventor recognized for contributions to Internet development

On the Web at:
http://www.w3.org/2003/12/timbl_knighted.html.en

Contact --
     Janet Daly, <janet@w3.org>, +1.617.253.5884 or +1.617.253.2613

http://www.w3.org/ -- 31 December 2003 -- Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor 
of the World Wide Web and director of the World Wide Web Consortium 
(W3C), will be made a Knight Commander, Order of the British Empire 
(KBE) by Queen Elizabeth. This was announced earlier today by Buckingham 
Palace as part of the 2004 New Year's Honours list.

The rank of Knight Commander is the second most senior rank of the Order 
of the British Empire, one of the Orders of Chivalry awarded. 
Berners-Lee, 48, a British citizen who lives in the United States, is 
being knighted in recognition of his "services to the global development 
of the Internet" through the invention of the World Wide Web.

"This is an honor which applies to the whole Web development community, 
and to the inventors and developers of the Internet, whose work made the 
Web possible, " stated Berners-Lee. "I accept this as an endorsement of 
the spirit of the Web; of building it in a decentralized way; of making 
best efforts to keep it open and fair; and of ensuring its fundamental 
technologies are available to all for broad use and innovation, and 
without having to pay licensing fees."

"By recognizing the Web in such a significant way, it also makes clear 
the responsibility its creators and users share," he continued. 
"Information technology changes the world, and as a result, its 
practitioners cannot be disconnected from its technical and societal 
impacts. Rather, we share a responsibility to make this work for the 
common good, and to take into account the diverse populations it serves."

Born in London, Berners-Lee graduated from the Queen's College at Oxford 
University, England in 1976. While there he built his first computer 
with a soldering iron, TTL gates, an M6800 processor and an old television.

In 1980, while Berners-Lee worked as a consultant software engineer at 
CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva, he wrote for 
his own private use his first program for storing information using the 
kind of random associations the brain makes. The "Enquire" program -- 
which was never published -- formed the conceptual basis for the future 
development of the Web.

While at CERN 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, 
"World Wide Web," in October 1990. He also wrote the first version of 
the document formatting language with the capability for hypertext 
links, known as HTML.

The program "WorldWideWeb" was first made available within CERN in 
December 1990, and the first successful demonstration of the Web clients 
and servers working over the Internet was made that same month. All of 
his code was made available on the Internet at large in the summer of 1991.

 From 1991 to 1993, Berners-Lee continued working on the design of the 
Web, coordinating feedback from users across the Internet. His initial 
specifications for URIs, HTTP and HTML were refined and discussed in 
larger circles as the Web technology spread.

In 1994, with encouragement and support from the late Michael Dertouzos, 
director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Laboratory 
for Computer Science (LCS), Berners-Lee founded the World Wide Web 
Consortium, where he presently serves as director. The W3C coordinates 
Web development worldwide, with teams at MIT's new Computer Science and 
Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), European Research Consortium 
for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM), and Keio University in Japan. 
Its goal is to lead the Web to its full potential, ensuring its 
stability through rapid evolution and revolutionary transformations of 
its usage.

Berners-Lee, who was cited by Time Magazine in 1999 as one of the 100 
greatest minds of the 20th century, is a Distinguished Fellow of the 
British Computer Society, an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of 
Electrical Engineers, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and 
Sciences. He was named a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2001, and 
received the Japan Prize in 2002. He was also the recipient of a 
MacArthur Fellowship in 1998.

He has been awarded many honorary doctorates from universities around 
the world, including his alma mater (2001). At MIT, he is the holder of 
the 3Com Founders Chair, and holds the position of senior research 
scientist at CSAIL.

Berners-Lee is also the author of the book "Weaving The Web" 
(HarperCollins), published in 1999, which describes the Web's birth and 
evolution.

About the World Wide Web Consortium [W3C]

The W3C was created to lead the Web to its full potential by developing 
common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure its 
interoperability. It is an international industry consortium jointly run 
by MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT 
CSAIL) in the USA, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and 
Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France and Keio University in 
Japan. Services provided by the Consortium include: a repository of 
information about the World Wide Web for developers and users, and 
various prototype and sample applications to demonstrate use of new 
technology. To date, nearly 400 organizations are Members of the 
Consortium. For more information see http://www.w3.org/

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Received on Wednesday, 31 December 2003 01:37:13 UTC