Five engineers who created the internet and the World Wide Web have together won the £1 million Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering for their innovations which have revolutionised the way we communicate and live today.
Engineers Robert Kahn, Vinton Cerf, Louis Pouzin, Tim Berners-Lee and Marc Andreessen were announced as the winners today, at the Royal Academy of Engineering, which administers the prize.
The art of engineering lies in the efficient combination of technologies to deliver the most meaningful results for society. The international team of judges for the prize consider that these five outstanding engineers epitomise this approach in the way that they designed and built the internet and the web.
Currently a third of the world’s population uses the internet which is estimated to carry around 330 petabytes of data per year, enough to transfer every character ever written in every book ever published 20 times over.
Lord Broers, chair of the judging panel for the prize, said: “Engineering is, by its very nature, a collaborative activity and the emergence of the internet and the web involved many teams of people all over the world. However, these five visionary engineers, never before honoured together as a group, led the key developments that shaped the internet and web as a coherent system and brought them into public use.
“We had originally planned to award this prize to a team of up to three people. It became apparent during our deliberations that we would have to exceed this limit for such an exceptional group of engineers.”
Professor Brian Cox, one of the judges on the panel, said: “The internet and the world wide web are prime examples of how engineering enables discovery, generates wealth and changes the world. We could not have imagined, even 20 years ago, having access to so much information.
“Knowledge is power, and these engineering innovations have empowered over 2 billion people worldwide – and this number is increasing every single day. That is what I call a global benefit to humankind.”
Stephen Tetlow, chief executive of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, commented: "Today’s winners demonstrate engineering is not a profession about dirty work in dingy factories but about making things that improve the world in which we live.
“The Internet and world wide web have revolutionised the way we live today, and I’d like to congratulate Robert Kahn, Vinton Cerf, Louis Pouzin, Tim Berners-Lee and Marc Andreessen.
“The success of these individuals shows the huge opportunities of a career in engineering. Their success will help inspire the problem-solving engineers of tomorrow.”
Lord Browne, chair of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering Foundation, added: “Engineering underpins economies, it gives commercial application to scientific discoveries, and it affects every aspect of our daily lives. By laying the foundations for the internet and the world wide web, the five winners have done an extraordinary service for humanity.
“I am delighted that the prize can honour the endeavour of these engineers, and make the story of their world-changing innovation known to the public.”
The internet built on the work done on the ARPAnet in the 1960s. Bob Kahn, Vint Cerf and Louis Pouzin made seminal contributions to the design and protocols that together make up the fundamental architecture at the heart of the internet.
The internet as a networking infrastructure connects billions of computers together globally. It was Tim Berners-Lee’s invention of the world wide web – an information-sharing model that is built on top of the internet – that allows us to use it in the way we do today. The web vastly extended the use of the internet beyond email and file transfer.
Marc Andreessen wrote the Mosaic browser that made the web accessible to everyone and triggered a huge number of applications unimagined by the early network pioneers.
The winners will gather in London, in June, for the formal presentation of the prize by Her Majesty The Queen.
- See www.w3.org to find out more about the history of the internet and the world wide web.