Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (born 8 June 1955),[1] also known as TimBL, is an English computer scientist best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web, the HTML markup language, the URL system, and HTTP.

[3][4] Berners-Lee proposed an information management system on 12 March 1989[5][6] and implemented the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the Internet in mid-November.

[12][13] Berners-Lee was previously a senior researcher and holder of the 3Com founder's chair at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).

[14] He is a director of the Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI)[15] and a member of the advisory board of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence.

While in Geneva, he proposed a project based on the concept of hypertext, to facilitate sharing and updating information among researchers.

[28] After leaving CERN in late 1980, he went to work at John Poole's Image Computer Systems, Ltd, in Bournemouth, Dorset.

[33] Robert Cailliau had independently proposed a project to develop a hypertext system at CERN, and joined Berners-Lee as a partner in his efforts to get the web off the ground.

His software also functioned as an editor (called WorldWideWeb, running on the NeXTSTEP operating system), and the first Web server, CERN HTTPd (short for Hypertext Transfer Protocol daemon).

The World Wide Web Consortium decided that its standards should be based on royalty-free technology, so that they easily could be adopted by anyone.

[42][43] In a Times article in October 2009, Berners-Lee admitted that the initial pair of slashes ("//") in a web address were "unnecessary".

[51] Berners-Lee was honoured as the "Inventor of the World Wide Web" during the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony, in which he appeared working with a vintage NeXT Computer.

The Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) was launched in October 2013, and Berners-Lee is leading the coalition of public and private organisations that includes Google, Facebook, Intel and Microsoft.

Berners-Lee will work with those aiming to decrease Internet access prices so that they fall below the UN Broadband Commission's worldwide target of 5% of monthly income.

[56] Berners-Lee holds the founders chair in Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he heads the Decentralized Information Group and is leading Solid, a joint project with the Qatar Computing Research Institute that aims to radically change the way Web applications work today, resulting in true data ownership as well as improved privacy.

[59] From the mid-2010s, Berners-Lee initially remained neutral on the emerging Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) proposal with its controversial digital rights management (DRM) implications.

[61] Varied concerns raised included being not supportive of the Internet's open philosophy against commercial interests and risks of users being forced to use a particular web browser to view specific DRM content.

[63][64] In November 2019, at the Internet Governance Forum in Berlin, Berners-Lee and the WWWF launched Contract for the Web, a campaign initiative to persuade governments, companies and citizens to commit to nine principles to stop "misuse", with the warning that "if we don't act now – and act together – to prevent the web being misused by those who want to exploit, divide and undermine, we are at risk of squandering [its potential for good]".

He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in the 2004 New Year Honours "for services to the global development of the Internet", and was invested formally on 16 July 2004.

[69][70][71] In 2012, Berners-Lee was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Sir Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork – the Beatles' Sgt.

Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover – to celebrate the British cultural figures of his life that he most admires to mark his 80th birthday.

[77] Leith is a Canadian Internet and banking entrepreneur and a founding director of Berners-Lee's World Wide Web Foundation.

"[81] The web's source code was auctioned by Sotheby's in London during 23–30 June 2021, as a non-fungible token (NFT) by TimBL.