Who Is Tim Berners-Lee?

1. Oxford, physics and the young programmer

Timothy John Berners-Lee was born on 8 June 1955 in London, England, the eldest of four children of Conway Berners-Lee and Mary Lee Woods, both mathematicians who had worked on the Ferranti Mark 1, one of the world's first commercial computers. He grew up in a household where computers and mathematics were part of everyday conversation, and he was fascinated by electronics from an early age, building a computer out of an old television set and teaching himself about circuits and programming. He attended the independent Emanuel School in London, and then Queen's College, Oxford, where he studied physics from 1973 to 1976.

At Oxford he built his first computer from spare parts, using an old television, a processor and a soldering iron, and he was caught hacking into the university's computer system, an offence for which he was banned from using the university computers. The episode is often told as a joke, but it shows the curiosity and the independence that would define his career: a willingness to take things apart to see how they worked, and a disregard for rules that seemed to stand in the way of understanding. He graduated in 1976 with a degree in physics, and he went to work as a programmer, first for a telecommunications company in Dorset, where he worked on distributed systems, and then for a computer company in Ferndown, where he worked on typesetting software.

The early jobs matter because they gave him experience of two problems that would shape the web. The first was the problem of incompatible systems: different computers, running different software, that could not easily share information. The second was the problem of lost information: documents, data and ideas that were stored in one place and could not be found from another. He was, by the late 1970s, thinking about how computers could be connected in a way that made information easy to share, and he was building the skills that would let him do it. The web was not an accident; it was the product of a decade of thinking about these problems.

2. CERN and the problem of lost information

In 1980 Berners-Lee went to CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, near Geneva in Switzerland, as a consultant software engineer. CERN was one of the largest scientific laboratories in the world, with thousands of physicists from dozens of countries, working on experiments that produced vast amounts of data. The laboratory's computers ran different systems, its scientists used different software, and its information was stored in different places, in different formats, and often lost. Berners-Lee, who was hired to work on the laboratory's control systems, saw the problem at first hand, and he wrote a program called ENQUIRE, a personal database that linked documents together, as a way of keeping track of the people, the projects and the machines he worked with.

He left CERN after six months and returned to England, where he worked for a computer company in Ferndown, but he came back in 1984 as a fellow, and he found the problem worse than before. The laboratory had more computers, more scientists and more data, and the difficulty of sharing information had grown with it. He began to think about a system that would work across all of CERN's computers, regardless of what software they ran, and that would allow any scientist to publish a document and any other scientist to read it, simply by following a link. The idea was not new: the concept of hypertext, of documents linked together, had been proposed in the 1960s, and the internet, the network that connected computers, already existed. What was missing was a system that combined the two in a way that anyone could use.

In March 1989 Berners-Lee wrote a proposal, titled Information Management: A Proposal, and circulated it at CERN. The proposal suggested a system of documents linked by hypertext, accessible over the internet, and it argued that the system would solve CERN's problem of lost information. His supervisor at the time wrote on the proposal that it was vague but exciting, a judgement that has become famous. Berners-Lee worked on the idea with Robert Cailliau, a Belgian engineer at CERN, who became his collaborator and advocate, and together they refined the proposal into a working system. The web was, at this stage, a solution to a problem inside a physics laboratory, and nobody, including its inventor, knew what it would become.

3. The 1989 proposal: HTML, HTTP and URLs

The web that Berners-Lee built had three essential parts, and he invented all three. The first was HTML, the HyperText Markup Language, a simple language for writing documents that could contain links to other documents. The second was HTTP, the HyperText Transfer Protocol, the set of rules by which one computer could ask another for a document. The third was the URL, the Uniform Resource Locator, the address that identified a document and told a computer where to find it. Together, the three made a system in which any document, on any computer, could be linked to any other document, on any other computer, and read by anyone with access to the network. The simplicity of the design was its strength: it was easy to implement, easy to use and easy to extend.

In December 1990 Berners-Lee built the first web server, a NeXT computer at CERN, and the first web browser, a program called WorldWideWeb that could both read and write web pages. The first website, which described the web itself, went live in August 1991, and it was accessible to anyone on the internet. The early web was text only, with no images and no colour, and it was used mainly by physicists, but it grew quickly, because anyone could set up a server and publish a page, and anyone could read it. By 1993 there were hundreds of web servers, and by 1994 there were thousands. The growth was driven by the openness of the design: Berners-Lee had not patented the web, and he had not charged for it, so anyone could use it.

The decision not to patent the web was the most important decision of his career, and it is the reason the web became universal. If he had charged for it, or if he had controlled it, the web would have been one system among many, and it would have faced competition from systems owned by companies. By giving it away, he ensured that it belonged to everyone, and that it would grow without restriction. He has said that the decision was not a sacrifice, because he never wanted to own the web, and that the web's value came from its universality. The decision is now cited as one of the most generous acts in the history of technology, and it is the foundation of his reputation.

4. The first website and the web goes free

In April 1993 CERN put the web into the public domain, announcing that the technology would be free for anyone to use, without royalties or restrictions. The announcement was a turning point, because it removed the last barrier to the web's growth, and it was followed by the release of Mosaic, the first popular graphical web browser, which made the web accessible to people who were not computer specialists. The web began to grow beyond physics, into universities, businesses and homes, and by the mid-1990s it was clear that it would become a mass medium. Berners-Lee, who had moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994, watched the growth with a mixture of pride and concern, because the web was becoming something he had not planned.

In 1994 he founded the World Wide Web Consortium, known as W3C, at MIT, with the aim of keeping the web's standards open and interoperable, so that no single company could control it. The Consortium, which is now an international organisation, develops the technical standards for the web, including HTML, and it works by consensus among its members, which include companies, universities and governments. Berners-Lee has led the Consortium since its founding, and he has used it to defend the principles of the web: that it should be open, that it should be accessible to everyone, and that it should not be owned by anyone. The Consortium's work is technical, but its purpose is political, in the sense that it is about who controls the infrastructure of the modern world.

The web's growth in the 1990s was extraordinary, and it changed the world in ways that Berners-Lee had not foreseen. It became a medium for commerce, for news, for entertainment and for politics, and it created companies that are now among the largest in the world. Berners-Lee has said that he is proud of what the web became, and that he is also disappointed by what it became, because the openness he designed was compromised by the concentration of power in a small number of companies. That disappointment is the starting point for his later work, and it is the reason he has spent the last decade trying to fix the web.

5. W3C, honours and the open web

Berners-Lee's work on the web brought him honours that few computer scientists have received. He was knighted in 2004, becoming Sir Tim Berners-Lee, and he was awarded the Order of Merit in 2007, one of the highest honours in Britain. In 2016 he received the ACM Turing Award, the highest honour in computer science, for inventing the World Wide Web, the first web browser and the fundamental protocols and algorithms that allowed the web to scale. He was also the subject of a celebrated moment at the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games, where he appeared on stage and sent a message that read This is for everyone, a phrase that became the title of his memoir. He co-founded the Open Data Institute in 2012 with Nigel Shadbolt, to promote the use of open data by governments and businesses.

The honours reflect the scale of what he did, but they also reflect the fact that he did it without seeking wealth or power. Unlike the founders of the companies that grew up on the web, Berners-Lee did not build a company around his invention or seek a fortune from it. He worked in academia, at MIT and at Oxford, and he devoted himself to the standards and the governance of the web. His choice has been praised as an example of public-spirited science, and it has also been questioned by those who argue that he could have done more good with the resources that a commercial web would have given him. Berners-Lee's own answer is that the web's value came from its openness, and that owning it would have destroyed it.

His work at W3C has involved defending the web against threats to its openness, including attempts by governments to control it and attempts by companies to build closed systems on top of it. He has argued for net neutrality, the principle that internet providers should treat all traffic equally, and for the right to privacy online, and he has spoken out against the concentration of power in the hands of a few large platforms. His position is that the web was designed to be decentralised, and that its centralisation is a failure, not a success. The argument is a political one, and it has made him a critic of the companies that dominate the web, including some that he has worked with.

6. Solid, Inrupt and the fight to fix the web

Since the mid-2010s Berners-Lee has worked on a project called Solid, short for Social Linked Data, which aims to return control of personal data to the people it belongs to. The idea is simple: instead of personal data being stored by the companies that provide online services, it should be stored in personal data pods, controlled by the user, and applications should ask the user for permission to access it. A user could store their photos, their contacts, their health records and their messages in a pod, and grant or revoke access to any application at any time. The system is built on the same principles as the web: open standards, decentralisation and user control.

Solid was developed by Berners-Lee and his team at MIT, in collaboration with researchers at the Qatar Computing Research Institute, Oxford University and other academic centres. In 2017 he co-founded a company, Inrupt, to bring Solid to businesses and governments, and the company has worked with enterprises and with governments, including the Flemish government in Belgium, which has tested Solid-based systems for public services. The Open Data Institute became the organisational steward of Solid in October 2024, and the project held its fourth Solid Symposium in London in the spring of 2026, with speakers including Berners-Lee himself. The project has struggled with adoption, as Berners-Lee himself has acknowledged, because it requires companies to give up control of data, and because users are accustomed to free services that are paid for with their data.

Inrupt has also worked on an AI assistant called Charlie, a prototype that draws on a user's Solid data store rather than on a corporate database, and asks permission before sharing information. The idea is that an AI assistant should work for the person using it, using their data with their consent, rather than for the company that provides it. Charlie is still a prototype, and it should be treated as a direction of travel rather than a finished product, but it shows how Berners-Lee's thinking about the web and his thinking about AI fit together: both are about who controls information, and both are about putting the user first. Whether Solid succeeds is not yet known, but it is the project that Berners-Lee regards as the most important work of his later career.

7. The memoir, AI and 2026

In September 2025 Berners-Lee published a memoir, This Is for Everyone, written with Stephen Witt, which tells the story of the web's origins, the rise of artificial intelligence and his prescriptions for an internet that people can reclaim. The title echoes the message he sent at the London 2012 Olympic Games, and the book argues that the web's founding values, openness, decentralisation and user control, can be restored, and that AI should be built on those values rather than against them. He toured the book in 2026, speaking at festivals including the Dalkey Book Festival in Ireland in June 2026, where he told audiences that AI should work for the person using it, and that people have the power to change the web for the better.

In 2026 he has spoken publicly about AI on several occasions, including at a technology festival in Barcelona in March 2026 and in an interview at the SXSW festival in London in June 2026, in which he said that AI should preserve the original values of the web, and that the concentration of personal data in the hands of a few companies is a threat to privacy and to democracy. He has argued that AI does not have an equivalent of the World Wide Web Consortium, an international body that sets open standards, and that the absence of such a body is a problem. His views are his own, and they are not shared by all technologists, some of whom argue that AI needs less regulation rather than more, but they are consistent with the position he has held since 1989: that technology should be open, and that it should serve its users.

He has also pushed for Solid to be adopted in India, telling an interviewer at the Jaipur Literature Festival in early 2026 that he would like to see the country introduce the system, so that ordinary users could decide whether and with whom to share their data. The suggestion shows the global ambition of the project, and it shows that Berners-Lee, at seventy-one, is still working on the same problem he identified at CERN in 1989: how to share information without losing control of it. The memoir and the public appearances of 2026 are part of that work, and they show a man who is still, after more than three decades, trying to fix the thing he invented.

8. Honours and legacy

Berners-Lee's legacy is the World Wide Web, and it is difficult to overstate its importance. Before the web, the internet was a tool for specialists; after it, the internet became the foundation of commerce, of communication, of education and of politics. The web made it possible for anyone to publish, for anyone to read, and for anyone to build a business, and it created the modern world in a way that few inventions have. The decision to give it away free, and to keep its standards open, is the reason it became universal, and it is the reason Berners-Lee is regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of technology.

There is also a legacy in the way he has conducted himself. He did not seek wealth or power, and he did not build a company around his invention. He worked in academia, he founded an open standards body, and he has spent his later years trying to fix the problems that the web's success created. That choice has made him a different kind of figure from the founders of the companies that grew up on the web, and it has made him a moral authority on the subject of the internet, a person whose views are sought because he has no commercial interest in them. His critics argue that his idealism has limited his influence, and that the web needed a stronger hand to defend it. His supporters argue that his idealism is the point, and that the web would not exist without it.

As of 2026, with his memoir published, Solid in development and the debate about AI at its height, Berners-Lee's story is not finished. The biography on this site gives the verified facts of his life; the judgement of his later work will depend on whether Solid succeeds, and on whether the web can be returned to the values he designed into it. What is already clear is that he invented the system that changed the world, that he gave it away, and that he has spent the rest of his life trying to make sure it lives up to its promise. That is a legacy that few people in history can match.

Frequently asked questions

Sources and further reading

• CERN — A short history of the Web
• Wikipedia — Tim Berners-Lee
• Solid Project
• Inrupt

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• Who Is Vladimir Putin? — Vladimir Putin has led Russia since 2000 — as president and, for four years, as prime minister. This explains his rise, his rule and his role in the world.
• Who Is Warren Buffett? — Warren Buffett built Berkshire Hathaway from a struggling textile mill into a vast conglomerate, and his letters taught generations value investing.
• Who Is Wasim Akram? — Wasim Akram is Pakistan's greatest fast bowler, the first to 500 ODI wickets and hero of the 1992 World Cup final, famed as the master of swing.
• Who Is Xi Jinping? — Xi Jinping has led China since 2012 as general secretary of the Communist Party and since 2013 as president, shaping its policies and vision.
• Who Is Zinedine Zidane? — Zinedine Zidane won the World Cup as a player and three Champions Leagues as a manager, and in July 2026 was appointed head coach of France.
• Who Was A. P. J. Abdul Kalam? — A. P. J. Abdul Kalam rose from a poor boyhood in Rameswaram to lead India's space and missile programmes, then served as the country's 11th president.
• Who Was Abdul Sattar Edhi? — Abdul Sattar Edhi built Pakistan's largest welfare network from a single free dispensary. This explains his life, his foundation and his legacy.
• Who Was Abdus Salam? — Abdus Salam won the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics for unifying two forces of nature. This explains his science, his institutions and his contested legacy.
• Who Was Abraham Lincoln? — Abraham Lincoln preserved the Union through the Civil War and ended slavery. This explains his rise, his presidency and his contested legacy.
• Who Was Ada Lovelace? — Ada Lovelace published the first program for a programmable machine in 1843. This explains her notes, her vision of computing and the debate over her role.
• Who Was Adolf Hitler? — Adolf Hitler led the Nazi Party and ruled Germany as dictator from 1933 to 1945, started the Second World War in Europe and was central to the Holocaust.
• Who Was Alan Turing? — Alan Turing defined modern computing, broke German naval Enigma and proposed the Turing test. This explains his science, his war work and his tragic end.
• Who Was Albert Einstein? — Albert Einstein rewrote physics with relativity and won the Nobel Prize for the photoelectric effect. This explains his ideas, his life and his legacy.
• Who Was Alexander Graham Bell? — Alexander Graham Bell patented the first practical telephone in 1876. This explains his work with the deaf, the patent fight and his wider inventions.
• Who Was Alexander the Great? — Alexander the Great built one of history's largest empires before dying at 32. This explains his conquests, his cities and the debate over his legacy.
• Who Was Alfred Nobel? — Alfred Nobel invented dynamite, held 355 patents and founded the Nobel Prizes. This explains his explosives empire, his will and the prizes' legacy.
• Who Was Allama Iqbal? — Allama Iqbal was Pakistan's national poet, whose ideas shaped the case for Pakistan. This explains his poetry, his philosophy and his legacy.
• Who Was Benazir Bhutto? — Benazir Bhutto was the first woman to lead a Muslim-majority country, serving as prime minister of Pakistan in 1988-90 and 1993-96.
• Who Was Bob Marley? — Bob Marley took reggae from Jamaica to the world and became a symbol of peace, resistance and unity. This explains his life, his music and his legacy.
• Who Was Bruce Lee? — Bruce Lee was the martial artist and actor who carried Hong Kong action cinema to the world and founded Jeet Kune Do, leaving a lasting influence.
• Who Was Charles Darwin? — Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, published in On the Origin of Species in 1859, became the foundation of modern biology.
• Who Was Charles Dickens? — Charles Dickens was the greatest novelist of the Victorian era, whose serialised novels mixed comedy, social criticism and unforgettable characters.
• Who Was Charlie Chaplin? — Charlie Chaplin created the Little Tramp, the most famous screen character of the silent era, and directed classics City Lights and The Great Dictator.
• Who Was Cleopatra? — Cleopatra VII was the last ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt, a multilingual stateswoman who kept her kingdom independent for 21 years before Rome annexed it.
• Who Was Diego Maradona? — Diego Maradona was an Argentine footballer who captained Argentina to the 1986 World Cup and is widely regarded as one of the greatest players in history.
• Who Was Don Bradman? — Don Bradman was an Australian cricketer who averaged 99.94 in Test cricket, a record so far ahead of any other batsman that it remains famous in sport.
• Who Was Elvis Presley? — Elvis Presley took gospel, country and rhythm and blues and turned them into rock and roll, becoming the most famous singer of his century.
• Who Was Emily Dickinson? — Emily Dickinson was an American poet who wrote nearly 1,800 poems in private in Amherst, Massachusetts, and was barely published in her lifetime.
• Who Was Faiz Ahmed Faiz? — Faiz Ahmed Faiz was Pakistan's most celebrated modern Urdu poet, whose verse joined romantic lyricism with resistance to injustice.
• Who Was Franz Beckenbauer? — Franz Beckenbauer was a German footballer known as Der Kaiser, who won the World Cup as captain in 1974 and as manager in 1990.
• Who Was Freddie Mercury? — Freddie Mercury was the lead singer of Queen, a four-octave voice and fearless showman who wrote Bohemian Rhapsody and We Are the Champions.
• Who Was Frida Kahlo? — Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter known for uncompromising, brilliantly coloured self-portraits exploring identity, the body and death.
• Who Was Galileo Galilei? — Galileo Galilei reshaped astronomy with his telescopic discoveries of 1610, defended a Sun-centred universe, and was tried by the Inquisition in 1633.
• Who Was Genghis Khan? — Genghis Khan united the Mongol tribes and built the largest contiguous land empire in history, a conqueror and lawgiver whose legacy is still argued over.
• Who Was George Washington? — George Washington won American independence, presided over the Constitutional Convention, and as first president defined the office — then walked away.
• Who Was Guglielmo Marconi? — Guglielmo Marconi was an Italian inventor who built the first practical wireless telegraph and sent the first transatlantic radio signal in 1901.
• Who Was Henry Ford? — Henry Ford was an American industrialist who founded the Ford Motor Company, built the Model T and perfected the moving assembly line.
• Who Was Isaac Newton? — Isaac Newton wrote the laws of motion and universal gravitation, invented calculus and transformed optics, leaving a lasting legacy in science.
• Who Was James Watt? — James Watt did not invent the steam engine, but his separate condenser of 1765 made it efficient enough to power the Industrial Revolution.
• Who Was Jane Austen? — Jane Austen published six novels in her lifetime, anonymously, and died at 41. This explains her life, her novels, her irony and her growing reputation.
• Who Was Jesus Christ? — Jesus of Nazareth is the central figure of Christianity, the world's largest religion. This explains his life in the Gospels, his teachings and his legacy.
• Who Was Johan Cruyff? — Johan Cruyff was the star of Total Football, won three Ballon d'Or awards, and as a manager built the Barcelona team that shaped modern football.
• Who Was Johannes Gutenberg? — Johannes Gutenberg built the first mechanised printing press in Europe and printed the Gutenberg Bible around 1455, changing how the world shared ideas.
• Who Was John Keats? — John Keats died of tuberculosis in Rome at 25, having written his six great odes in a single year. This explains his short life, his poetry and his fame.
• Who Was Joseph Stalin? — Joseph Stalin led the Soviet Union from the 1920s until 1953, industrialised the country and led it through the Second World War, ruling through terror.
• Who Was Julius Caesar? — Julius Caesar conquered Gaul, crossed the Rubicon and remade Rome's calendar and government, and was murdered by senators who feared he would be king.
• Who Was Kobe Bryant? — Kobe Bryant won five NBA championships with the Los Angeles Lakers and became known for the Mamba Mentality, on and off the court.
• Who Was Leo Tolstoy? — Leo Tolstoy wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina, then abandoned literary fame for a radical moral philosophy that influenced Gandhi and the world.
• Who Was Leonardo da Vinci? — Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper and filled notebooks with anatomy and engineering, becoming the symbol of the Renaissance.
• Who Was Ludwig van Beethoven? — Ludwig van Beethoven wrote nine symphonies, 32 piano sonatas and the Missa Solemnis, much of it while deaf. This explains his life and legacy.
• Who Was Mahatma Gandhi? — Mahatma Gandhi led India to independence through nonviolent resistance, and his ideas shaped civil-rights movements worldwide.
• Who Was Mao Zedong? — Mao Zedong founded the People's Republic of China in 1949 and led it until 1976, bringing unification and the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution.
• Who Was Margaret Thatcher? — Margaret Thatcher was the first woman to serve as British prime minister, leading the UK from 1979 to 1990 through reform, the Falklands War and division.
• Who Was Marie Curie? — Marie Curie discovered polonium and radium and remains the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences, a pioneer of radioactivity research.
• Who Was Marilyn Monroe? — Marilyn Monroe was the biggest star of the 1950s, the blonde bombshell of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Some Like It Hot, who fought the studio system.
• Who Was Mark Twain? — Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, wrote Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and became America's most famous humorist.
• Who Was Maya Angelou? — Maya Angelou was a poet, memoirist and civil rights activist whose autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings made her widely read.
• Who Was Michael Jackson? — Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, made Thriller, the best-selling album in history, and changed music video, dance and pop stardom.
• Who Was Mirza Ghalib? — Mirza Ghalib (1797-1869) is the pre-eminent Urdu and Persian poet of the last Mughal era, whose ghazals on love, loss and doubt are still recited.
• Who Was Muhammad Ali Jinnah? — Muhammad Ali Jinnah was the barrister and statesman who led the All-India Muslim League and became Pakistan's first Governor-General in 1947.
• Who Was Muhammad Ali? — Muhammad Ali was the three-time heavyweight champion who called himself The Greatest, and the most famous athlete of the twentieth century.
• Who Was Napoleon Bonaparte? — Napoleon Bonaparte rose from Corsica to Emperor of the French, redrew the map of Europe, and left a legal code that still shapes law across the world.
• Who Was Nelson Mandela? — Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison under apartheid, then became South Africa's first democratically elected president and a Nobel Peace laureate.
• Who Was Nikola Tesla? — Nikola Tesla developed the alternating-current power system, the induction motor and the Tesla coil, making long-distance electric power practical.
• Who Was Osama bin Laden? — Osama bin Laden founded al-Qaeda in 1988 and organised the September 11, 2001 attacks, in which nearly 3,000 people were killed.
• Who Was Pablo Neruda? — Pablo Neruda was Chile's great poet, a Nobel laureate, a communist senator and a diplomat. This explains his poetry, his politics and his death.
• Who Was Pablo Picasso? — Pablo Picasso co-founded Cubism, painted Guernica, and spent 75 years breaking the rules of art — the most influential artist of the twentieth century.
• Who Was Pelé? — Pele is the only footballer to win three World Cups, the youngest winner, and the game's first global icon. This is his life, his goals and his legacy.
• Who Was Pope Francis? The People's Pope — Pope Francis, the first pope from the Americas and the first Jesuit pope, led the Catholic Church from 2013 to 2025 with an emphasis on mercy and the poor.
• Who Was Prophet Muhammad? — The Prophet Muhammad is the founder of Islam, the world's second-largest religion. This explains his life, his teachings and his legacy.
• Who Was Queen Elizabeth II? — Queen Elizabeth II reigned for 70 years, from 1952 to 2022 — the longest reign in British history. This explains her life, her reign and her legacy.
• Who Was Rabindranath Tagore? — Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the author of the national anthems of India and Bangladesh.
• Who Was Rosa Parks? — Rosa Parks was not a tired seamstress who acted on impulse. She was a trained activist and NAACP secretary whose bus refusal was a deliberate act.
• Who Was Rosalind Franklin? — Rosalind Franklin's X-ray image, Photograph 51, gave Watson and Crick the key evidence for the double helix. This is her life and the credit debate.
• Who Was Rumi? — Rumi, the thirteenth-century Persian poet of Konya, wrote the Masnavi and the Divan-e Shams, and became the most widely read poet in the world.
• Who Was Shane Warne? — Shane Warne took 708 Test wickets, bowled the Ball of the Century in 1993 and won the 1999 World Cup with Australia. This explains his career.
• Who Was Stephen Hawking? — Stephen Hawking was a theoretical physicist who showed that black holes emit radiation and wrote A Brief History of Time. He died in 2018, aged 76.
• Who Was Steve Jobs? — Steve Jobs co-founded Apple in 1976, was forced out in 1985, built Pixar, and returned to launch the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad. He died in 2011, aged 56.
• Who Was Thomas Edison? — Thomas Edison held 1,093 US patents, invented the phonograph and the practical incandescent lamp, and built the first commercial electric power system.
• Who Was Vincent van Gogh? — Vincent van Gogh produced about 2,100 artworks in a single decade, including The Starry Night and Sunflowers, and became famous only after his death at 37.
• Who Was William Shakespeare? — William Shakespeare is the most performed playwright in history, yet almost nothing is reliably known about his private life.
• Who Was William Wordsworth? — William Wordsworth launched English Romanticism with Lyrical Ballads and wrote The Prelude, the great autobiographical poem. This explains his life.
• Who Was Winston Churchill? — Winston Churchill led Britain through the Second World War and won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and his record on empire is still debated.
• Who Was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart? — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a child prodigy who composed more than 600 works before his death at 35, defining the Classical era.
• Why Van Gogh Became Famous After Death — Vincent van Gogh died in 1890 almost unknown, and within a few decades his paintings were among the most loved in the world.