Most people who search on Google, share on Facebook and shop on Amazon have never heard of Tim Berners-Lee. But they might not be doing any of those things had he not invented the World Wide Web.
Berners-Lee, 61, is this year's recipient of the A.M. Turing Award, computing's version of the Nobel Prize.
Tuesday's award announcement by the Association for Computing Machinery marks another pinnacle for British-born Berners-Lee, who has already been knighted by the Queen and named as one of the 100 most important people in the 20th Century by Time magazine.
The honor comes with a $US1 million ($A1.3 million) prize funded by Google, one of many companies that made a fortune thanks to Berners-Lee's efforts to make the internet more accessible and useful.
