Web inventor knighted

Tim Berners-Lee was knighted by the Queen of England last week, the latest in a series of honours for the man credited with inventing the web.
 
Queen Elizabeth II dubbed Berners-Lee a Knight Commander, Order of the British Empire (KBE), in a ceremony mid-day in London. The rank is the second highest of the Order of the British Empire honours.

Berners-Lee, 49, is a British citizen who now lives in the United States, and was knighted for "his services to the global development of the internet," according to a statement from Buckingham Palace.

Now the director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), a standards-setting body, in the early 1990s, Berners-Lee coined the term "World Wide Web," wrote the first web server and client software, and authored the first version of HTML, the markup language used to create and format web pages.

At the time, he was working at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory, in Geneva.

"I am humbled by this great honour," said the new Sir Timothy in a statement.

"The web came about through an ongoing collaboration with my fellow inventors and developers worldwide. Everyone in the internet community should be recognised by this honour."

Earlier this year, Berners-Lee was awarded the first Millennium Technology Prize in Helsinki. The cash prize, given by the Finnish Technology Award Foundation, was worth 1 million euros (US$1.2 million).