14 June 2007

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, has been honoured by Queen Elizabeth II by becoming a member of the Order of Merit.

The status, which can only have 24 British members at any given time, is specifically reserved for scholars, politicians, scientists, artists and writers of great note and has previously been bestowed upon Florence Nightingale and Tom Stoppard.

Sir Tim claimed that the award recognises the work conducted by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in setting global standards for web use.

"Awards such as this are for public service, a service which in this case has been largely carried out by the W3C," he remarked.

He added that all of the members of the organisation and those involved in its affairs should take credit for the award, as it is an "acknowledgment of the importance of W3C's work".

Since creating the World Wide Web at Cern in 1989, Sir Tim has gone on to be the director of the W3C and Senior Researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

© Adfero Ltd

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