Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (born June 8, 1955), also known as TimBL, is an English computer scientist best known for inventing the World Wide Web, HTML, the URL system, and HTTP. He works as a research fellow at the University of Oxford and was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
In March 1989, Berners-Lee suggested a way to organize information more effectively. In mid-November of that year, he created the first working system that allowed a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server to communicate over the Internet. He designed and built the first web browser and web server, helping the web grow over time. He started and leads the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), an organization that guides the web’s development. He also co-founded the World Wide Web Foundation with Rosemary Leith. In 2009, he was chosen as a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences.
Earlier, Berners-Lee worked as a senior researcher and held a special position at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). He is a director of the Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI) and a member of the advisory board at MIT’s Center for Collective Intelligence. In 2011, he joined the board of trustees at the Ford Foundation. He is a founder and president of the Open Data Institute and advises the social network MeWe. In 2004, Queen Elizabeth II knighted him for his groundbreaking work. He received the 2016 Turing Award for inventing the World Wide Web, the first web browser, and the key protocols and algorithms that allow the web to expand. He was listed by Time magazine as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th century and has received many other honors for his work.
Early life
Tim Berners-Lee was born in London on June 8, 1955. His parents were Mary Lee Berners-Lee (born Woods in 1924, died in 2017) and Conway Berners-Lee (born in 1921, died in 2019). Both parents were mathematicians and computer scientists from Birmingham. They worked on the Ferranti Mark 1, which was the first computer built for commercial use. He has three younger siblings, including his brother Mike, who is a professor of ecology and climate change management.
Berners-Lee attended Sheen Mount Primary School. He then went to Emanuel School, a grammar school, from 1969 to 1973. As a child, he enjoyed watching trains and learned about electronics by experimenting with a model railway.
In 1976, he earned the highest honor in physics from The Queen's College at Oxford University. While studying there, he built a computer using an old television set he bought from a repair shop.
Career and research
After graduating, Berners-Lee worked as an engineer at the telecommunications company Plessey in Poole, Dorset. In 1978, he joined D. G. Nash in Ferndown, Dorset, where he helped create software for printers to format text.
Berners-Lee worked as an independent contractor at CERN from June to December 1980. While in Geneva, he proposed a project based on the idea of hypertext to help researchers share and update information. To show how it could work, he built a prototype called ENQUIRE.
After leaving CERN in late 1980, he worked at John Poole's Image Computer Systems, Ltd., in Bournemouth, Dorset. He managed the company's technical operations for three years. The project he worked on was called "real-time remote procedure call," which gave him experience in computer networking. In 1984, he returned to CERN as a fellow.
In 1989, CERN was the largest Internet Node in Europe, and Berners-Lee saw an opportunity to combine hypertext with the Internet. He wrote his proposal in March 1989 and shared it again in 1990. His manager, Mike Sendall, called the proposal "vague, but exciting." Robert Cailliau had also proposed a similar project at CERN and joined Berners-Lee to develop the World Wide Web. They used ideas from the ENQUIRE system to create the first web browser, called WorldWideWeb, and the first web server, CERN httpd.
Berners-Lee published the first website on 20 December 1990. The site explained what the World Wide Web was and how people could use a browser, set up a web server, and create a website. On 6 August 1991, he posted a public invitation to collaborate on the WorldWideWeb project on Usenet.
In 2016, a group of 25 scientists, academics, writers, and world leaders named the invention of the World Wide Web as the top cultural moment that shaped the world. They wrote: "The fastest growing communications medium of all time, the Internet has changed the shape of modern life forever. We can connect with each other instantly, all over the world."
In 1994, Berners-Lee founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The W3C included companies that worked together to create standards for the Web. Berners-Lee made his ideas freely available, without patents or royalties. The W3C decided that its standards should be based on royalty-free technology so that anyone could use them easily.
Berners-Lee participated in Curl Corp's effort to develop and promote the Curl programming language.
In 2001, he became a patron of the East Dorset Heritage Trust, where he had previously lived in Colehill, Wimborne, East Dorset. In 2004, he accepted a position as a professor of computer science at the University of Southampton, Hampshire, to work on the Semantic Web.
In a 2009 article in The Times, Berners-Lee admitted that the two slashes ("//") in web addresses were unnecessary. He said, "There you go, it seemed like a good idea at the time," in a lighthearted apology.
Since 2021, Berners-Lee has been an advisory board member of the Proton Foundation.
By 2010, he helped create data.gov.uk with Nigel Shadbolt. He said that the changes to Ordnance Survey data showed a cultural shift in government, where information should be public unless there was a good reason to keep it private. He added that greater openness would help people make informed choices and participate in important issues.
In November 2009, Berners-Lee launched the World Wide Web Foundation (WWWF).
Berners-Lee supports net neutrality, which means Internet service providers should provide "connectivity with no strings attached," without controlling or monitoring users' browsing activity without their permission. He believes net neutrality is a human right. In 2017, he and 20 other Internet pioneers wrote an open letter to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), urging it to cancel a vote on net neutrality. The letter was addressed to several government officials.
Berners-Lee was honored as the "Inventor of the World Wide Web" during the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony. He appeared working with a vintage NeXT Computer. He tweeted, "This is for everyone," which was displayed in LED lights on the audience chairs. In 2025, he released a book titled The History of the Internet.
Berners-Lee joined the board of advisors for the startup State.com in London. As of May 2012, he was president of the Open Data Institute, which he and Shadbolt co-founded in 2012.
The Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) was launched in 2013. Berners-Lee leads this coalition, which includes companies like Google, Facebook, Intel, and Microsoft. The A4AI aims to make Internet access more affordable, especially in developing countries where only 31% of people were online in 2013. Berners-Lee works to lower Internet costs to meet the UN Broadband Commission's goal of 5% of monthly income.
Berners-Lee holds the founders chair in Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He leads the Decentralized Information Group and the Solid project, which aims to change how Web applications work to give users true data ownership and greater privacy. In 2016, he joined the Department of Computer Science at Oxford University as a professorial research fellow and a fellow of Christ Church, one of the Oxford colleges.
From the mid-2010s, Berners-Lee remained neutral on the Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) proposal, which involved digital rights management (DRM). In March 2017, he supported the EME proposal, arguing that DRM was inevitable despite concerns about the Internet's open philosophy. As W3C director, he approved the EME specification in July 2017. This decision faced opposition from groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Free Software Foundation, which raised concerns about commercial interests and user freedom. The EME specification became a formal W3C recommendation in September 2017.
On 30 September 2018, Berners-Lee announced his open-source startup, Inrupt, to support the Solid project.
Personal life
Berners-Lee has said, "I like to keep work and personal life separate."
Berners-Lee married three times. After finishing his studies at Oxford, he married Jane Northcote in 1976. Jane was the daughter of Don Northcote, a biologist from Cambridge. The couple moved to Poole to work at Plessey, and later moved to CERN in 1980 for a six-month job. After returning to Britain, they decided to end their marriage.
In 1990, Berners-Lee married Nancy Carlson, an American computer programmer. At the time, Nancy worked in Switzerland for the World Health Organization. They had two children and divorced in 2011. In 2014, he married Rosemary Leith at the Chapel Royal, St. James's Palace in London. Rosemary is a Canadian entrepreneur who works in internet and banking. She is also a founding director of Berners-Lee's World Wide Web Foundation. The couple works together to support companies that develop artificial intelligence.
Berners-Lee was raised as an Anglican but stopped practicing religion in his youth. After becoming a parent, he joined the Unitarian Universalist (UU) faith. When asked if he believes in God, he said, "Not in the way most people do. I'm atheist and Unitarian Universalist."
In 2021, Berners-Lee sold the web's source code as a non-fungible token (NFT) at an auction in London by Sotheby's. The auction took place from June 23 to June 30, and the NFT sold for US$5,434,500. The money will be used to support projects led by Berners-Lee and Leith.
In 2025, Berners-Lee published a memoir titled This Is for Everyone, co-written with Stephen Witt. The book received mixed reviews. Stephen Fry recorded the audiobook version.
In November 2025, Berners-Lee appeared as a guest on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs. His chosen luxury item for the hypothetical island was a chromatic harmonica.
Views
Berners-Lee believes Wikipedia is likely one of the best examples of what he wanted the World Wide Web to become. In Chapter 7 of his book This is for Everyone, he writes:
Books
Berners-Lee, Tim; Fischetti, Mark (September 22, 1999). Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web by Its Inventor (First hardcover edition). San Francisco: HarperBusiness. ISBN 0062515861. OCLC 41238513.
Berners-Lee, Tim (September 9, 2025). This is for Everyone: The Unfinished Story of the World Wide Web (First hardcover edition). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0374612467. OCLC 1478325766.