World wide winner: Sir Tim scoops a million

Oxford grad and inventor of the web Sir Tim Berners-Lee takes inaugural big-time engineering prize.


A new award to recognise the best of engineering has gone to Oxford grad and all-round internet daddy Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

Sir Tim Berners-LAD: He’s one of ours!

Sir Tim, who studied physics at Queen’s from 1973-6, scooped the £1million Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering with four other internet pioneers.

The prize has been created to celebrate the best of engineering in Britain, which organisers feel is being ignored considering our history as a nation of inventors.

Sir Tim invented the world wide web, the system of interlinked web pages accessed via the internet. Basically, he’s the reason you can browse The Tab for hours and hours.

The four other winners were Louis Pouzin, Robert Kahn, Vincent Cerf, and Mark Andreessen. Simple mathematics will tell you they took home £200,000 each.

Sir Tim said: “I am honoured to receive this accolade and humbled to share it with them.

“I want the web to inspire and empower new generations of engineers – boys and, especially, girls – who will build, in turn, their own platforms, to improve our global society.”