October 9th, 2007
Queen to appoint Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee to England's Order of Merit
Although he is already a Knight, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web is about to have an even more prestigious honor bestowed upon him. According to World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) spokesperson Janet Daly, Sir Tim will, on Thursday, be appointed to England’s Order of Merit, considered by some to be the most prestigious honor that the Monarchy can bestow upon any individual.
Since 1902, less than 100 people have been appointed to the Order of Merit. “Membership” (if you can call it that) in the Order of Merit at any given time is limited to the Queen of England and 24 other currently living people. As you can see from the list of current honorees (found here, on the Wikipedia), the majority of appointees are already Knights, Lords, Barons, or Baronnesses. Whereas Sir Tim’s existing honor of Knighthood is one that requires ministerial input, getting appointed to the Order of Merit is something the Queen can do on her own. Earlier this year, I had an opportunity to interview Sir Tim about his work on the Semantic Web and the query language for it called Sparql.
