Portrait of Tim Berners-Lee

Birthday profile

Tim Berners-Lee

Tim Berners-Lee, English computer scientist, invented the World Wide Web

Born
June 8, 1955
Age in 2026
71
Zodiac sign
Gemini
Birth year
1955

About Tim Berners-Lee

Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (born 8 June 1955), also known as TimBL, is an English computer scientist best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web, HTML, the URL system, and HTTP. He is a professorial research fellow at the University of Oxford and a professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Berners-Lee proposed an information management system on 12 March 1989 and implemented the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the Internet in mid-November. He devised and implemented the first Web browser and Web server and helped foster the Web's subsequent development. He is the founder and emeritus director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which oversees the continued development of the Web. He co-founded (with Rosemary Leith) the World Wide Web Foundation. In 2009, he was elected Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences. 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). He is a director of the Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI) and a member of the advisory board of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence. In 2011, he was named a member of the board of trustees of the Ford Foundation. He is a founder and president of the Open Data Institute and is an advisor at social network MeWe. In 2004, Berners-Lee was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his pioneering work. He received the 2016 Turing Award "for inventing the World Wide Web, the first web browser, and the fundamental protocols and algorithms allowing the Web to scale". He was named in Time magazine's list of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th century and has received a number of other accolades for his invention.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

Tim Berners-Lee timeline

  1. Berners-Lee proposed an information management system on 12 March 1989 and implemented the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the Internet in mid-November.
  2. He received the 2016 Turing Award "for inventing the World Wide Web, the first web browser, and the fundamental protocols and algorithms allowing the Web to scale".

The world when Tim Berners-Lee was born

Tim Berners-Lee was born in 1955. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1955

  • #1 song"Rock Around the Clock" – Bill Haley & His Comets
  • Top movieMarty
  • Top TV showThe $64,000 Question
  • Best-selling bookLolita – Vladimir Nabokov

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentBrooklyn Dodgers win their first World Series
  • Top headlineRosa Parks sparks the Montgomery Bus Boycott
  • Technology milestoneDisneyland opens in Anaheim, California
  • Defining fadJames Dean and rebel culture
  • Notable inventionVelcro commercially available
  • World population2.77 billion

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderDwight D. Eisenhower
  • Sports championBrooklyn Dodgers (World Series)
  • Also wonSyracuse Nationals (NBA)
  • U.S. population165.3M

1955 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Tim Berners-Lee's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19552026
Gas$0.29$3.45/gal
Average home$10,950$435,000
Average income$6,200$67,500
Minimum wage$0.75$7.25/hr (federal)
Movie ticket$0.50$11.95
Postage stamp$0.03$0.73
Population165.3M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.