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Southampton uni honours Berners-Lee with professorship

Chair for web pioneer

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, is to take up a Chair of Computer Science at the University of Southampton's School of Electronics and Computer Science. He will hold this position alongside his current appointments as Senior Research Scientist at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

Professor Wendy Hall, Head of the School of Electronics and Computer Science, enthused: "We are delighted that Tim Berners-Lee has accepted this appointment."

Berners-Lee will be working at the university on his next project - the Semantic Web - which he has described as "an extension of the current web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in co-operation". It is a collaborative effort led by W3C with participation from a large number of researchers and industrial partners.

"Many of the staff in the School have worked with him [Berners-Lee] on the development of the World Wide Web over many years, and we are now closely involved with the evolution of the Semantic Web," said Professor Hall.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989, while working at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva. Since 1994 he has been based at MIT, directing the W3 Consortium, the standard-setting body which develops common protocols to realize the full potential of the Web. In 1999 he was named by Time Magazine as one of the top 20 scientists and thinkers of the twentieth century.

In 1996 the University of Southampton was the first university to award Tim Berners-Lee an honorary degree in recognition of his role in developing the World Wide Web. In 2003 he was awarded a knighthood for his pioneering work on global communications. ®

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