World wide web creator gains 'K' upgrade

Tim Berners-Lee, widely acknowledged as the father of the World Wide Web, is now Sir Tim Berners-Lee after receiving a knighthood in the New Years Honours List for 'services to the global development of the internet'.

It was Berners-Lee who, in 1989, developed the document identifier now called the Universal Resource Locator (URL) which triggered the creation of the World Wide Web.

There are also honours for several government figures with IT-related roles. These include a knighthood for Office of Government Commerce chief executive Peter Gershon, and a CBE for out-going government e-Envoy Andrew Pinder.

Berners-Lee was working as a software engineer at the European Particle Physics Laboratory at Cern in Switzerland when he proposed his URL format.

At the time, he was seeking a way to share access online to the mass of technical documents Cern generated.

The following year he wrote 'httpd', the first web server, and the 'World Wide Web' browser-cum-editor. He is also credited with driving some early web protocols, including HTML for linking web pages.

Berners-Lee went on to help found the World Wide Web Consortium and is now its director.

Gershon was brought in from BAe Systems to improve government purchasing. He has spent much of his time negotiating with large technology companies to get better value for money from IT.

Last month he was tasked with reviewing central government running costs on behalf of Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown.

Pinder has concentrated on getting government departments online and promoting e-government. In April, the post of e-Envoy will then disappear.

Also gaining CBEs are Dr Andrew Holt, head of the Information Services Group at the Department of Health, and Annette Vernon, director of information and communications technologies and e-delivery at the Department for Constitutional Affairs.

David Jordan, UK managing director of Philips Electronics, gains a CBE for services to the UK electronics industry.