A Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher credited with inventing the World Wide Web is the winner of the 2007 Charles Stark Draper Prize.
Timothy Berners-Lee will receive the $500,000 award and gold medallion that is considered engineering's Nobel Prize during Feb. 20 ceremonies in Washington.
Berners-Lee "imaginatively combined ideas to create the World Wide Web, an extraordinary innovation that is rapidly transforming the way people store, access, and share information around the globe," according to the National Academy of Engineers, which established the Draper Prize in 1988 to honor engineers whose accomplishments have significantly benefited society.
Berners-Lee proposed his concept for the Web in 1989 while at the European Organization for Nuclear Research. He launched it on the Internet in 1991 and continued to refine its design through 1993.
He is now a senior researcher at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
The Draper Prize, which honors the memory of "Doc" Draper, the "father of inertial navigation," is designed to increase public understanding of the contributions of engineering and technology.
Copyright 2007 by United Press International
