WWW Inventor Gets Rare Honor

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the man who gave us the world wide web, has received yet another honor.   The Queen of England has granted Berners-Lee the Order of Merit, one of Britain’s most prestigious awards, generally given for remarkable contributions to the arts or sciences. In 2004 he wasalso named Greatest Briton.   The Order of Merit is restricted to 24 living members, who have the right to use OM after their names, and the award is granted directly by the Queen. Previousrecipients include Sir Winston Churchill and Florence Nightingale. Berners-Lee was inducted with two other members.   Berners-Lee came up with the idea for the World Wide Web in 1991, while anemployee of CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva. He created the hypertext program that allowed users to browse, linkand organize pages on the Internet.   These days he’s the director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which as based at MIT. He was given hisknighthood in the honors list at the beginning of 2004.   “Awards such as this are for public service, a service which in this case has been largely carried out by the W3C. All thoseinvolved in Consortium activity should feel recognized by this acknowledgment of the importance of W3C’s work,” said Berners-Lee in a statement.