360Tim Berners-Lee
In 60 words
Tim Berners-Lee is a British computer scientist who invented the World Wide Web. Working at CERN near Geneva, he proposed it in March 1989 and created the first web browser, web server and website by the end of 1990. He and CERN made the web free for everyone to use, which helped it grow to more than a billion websites.
Born in London in 1955 to parents who both worked on early computers, he studied physics at Oxford. At CERN he wanted a way for scientists to share information across different computers, using links between documents.
He founded the World Wide Web Consortium in 1994 to develop web standards, and was knighted in 2004. He continues to campaign for an open web that protects people's privacy.