Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (born June 8, 1955), also called TimBL, is an English computer scientist who created the World Wide Web, HTML, the URL system, and HTTP. He is a research professor at the University of Oxford and a former professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
On March 12, 1989, Berners-Lee suggested a way to organize information. In mid-November, he made the first successful connection between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server over the Internet. He created the first web browser and web server and helped the web grow. He started and is a former leader of 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.
Before, Berners-Lee was a senior researcher and held the 3Com founder’s chair at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). He leads the Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI) and is on the advisory board of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence. In 2011, he joined the board of trustees of 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 honored him with a knighthood for his important work. He won the 2016 Turing Award for inventing the World Wide Web, the first web browser, and the protocols and methods that allow the web to grow. He was listed in Time magazine’s 100 Most Important People of the 20th century and has received many other honors for his invention.
Early life
Tim Berners-Lee was born in London on June 8, 1955. His parents were Mary Lee Berners-Lee (born 1924, died 2017) and Conway Berners-Lee (born 1921, died 2019), both mathematicians and computer scientists from Birmingham. They worked on the Ferranti Mark 1, the first computer built for commercial use. He has three younger siblings, including his brother Mike, who is a professor who studies ecology and climate change.
Berners-Lee attended Sheen Mount Primary School and then Emanuel School, a grammar school, from 1969 to 1973. As a child, he enjoyed collecting train information and learned about electronics by working on a model railway.
In 1976, he received the highest grade in physics from The Queen's College, Oxford. While there, he built a computer using an old television set he bought from a repair shop.
Career and research
After finishing school, Berners-Lee worked as an engineer at a communication company called Plessey in Poole, Dorset. In 1978, he started working at D. G. Nash in Ferndown, Dorset. There, he helped develop software that helped printers create text layouts.
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, which would help researchers share and update information more easily. To show how it could work, he created a system 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 side for three years. The project he worked on was called a "real-time remote procedure call," which gave him experience with 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 hypertext system at CERN and joined Berners-Lee to help develop the World Wide Web. They used ideas from the ENQUIRE system to create the World Wide Web. Berners-Lee designed the first web browser, which also acted as an editor called WorldWideWeb, and the first web server, CERN httpd.
Berners-Lee published the first website on December 20, 1990. The website explained the World Wide Web and showed how people could use a browser, set up a web server, and create a website. On August 6, 1991, he posted a public invitation for collaboration with the WorldWideWeb project on Usenet.
In a list of 80 cultural moments that shaped the world, the invention of the World Wide Web was ranked number one. The entry said, "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 W3C at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The W3C included companies that wanted to create standards to improve the Web. Berners-Lee made his ideas freely available, with no patents or royalties. The W3C decided that its standards should be based on technology that was free to use.
Berners-Lee participated in Curl Corp's attempt to develop and promote the Curl programming language.
In 2001, Berners-Lee became a patron of the East Dorset Heritage Trust. 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 in Hampshire to work on the Semantic Web.
In a Times article in October 2009, 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 a member of the advisory board of Proton Foundation.
By 2010, he helped create data.gov.uk with Nigel Shadbolt. He said, "The changes signal a wider cultural change in government based on an assumption that information should be in the public domain unless there is a good reason not to—not the other way around." He added, "Greater openness, accountability, and transparency in government will give people greater choice and make it easier for individuals to get more directly involved in issues that matter to them."
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 customers' browsing activity without their consent. He believes net neutrality is a human network right. He and 20 other Internet pioneers wrote an open letter to the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 2017, urging them to cancel a vote on net neutrality. The letter was addressed to Senator Roger Wicker, Senator Brian Schatz, Representative Marsha Blackburn, and Representative Michael F. Doyle.
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 appeared in LED lights attached to the chairs of the audience. In 2025, he released a book on the history of the Internet with the same name.
Berners-Lee joined the board of advisors of start-up State.com, based 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
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. They 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 was working 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 also helped start 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) church. When asked if he believes in God, he said, "Not in the sense most people mean. I am an atheist and a Unitarian Universalist."
In 2021, Berners-Lee sold the source code for the web as a non-fungible token (NFT) at an auction in London. The auction took place from June 23 to June 30, and the NFT sold for $5,434,500. The money will be used to support projects led by Berners-Lee and Leith.
In 2025, Berners-Lee wrote a book called This Is for Everyone with the help of a writer named 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. He chose a chromatic harmonica as his luxury item for the hypothetical island.
Views
Berners-Lee thinks Wikipedia is the best example of what he wanted the World Wide Web to become. In Chapter 7 of This is for Everyone, he writes:
Books
- Berners-Lee, Tim; Fischetti, Mark (22 September 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 (9 September 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.