Five
engineers who helped create the internet were awarded a $1.5 million
prize which British organisers hope will come to be seen as equivalent
to a Nobel prize for engineering.
Robert Kahn,
Vinton Cerf and Marc Andreessen of the United States will share the
first ever £1 million (1.2 million euro) Queen Elizabeth Prize for
Engineering with Louis Pouzin of France and Tim Berners-Lee of Britain.
"The
emergence of the Internet and the web involved many teams of people all
over the world," said Alec Broers, chair of the judging panel.
"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."
Britain's
Queen Elizabeth II, who gives her name to the prize, will present the
award to the winners in a formal ceremony in London in June.
Organisers
said Kahn, Cerf and Pouzin had made "seminal" contributions to the
design and protocols that make up the fundamental architecture of the
internet.
Berners-Lee invented the World Wide
Web, the information-sharing system built on top of the Internet which
allows us to use it in the way we do today.
Andreessen, meanwhile, created the first widely-used web browser, Mosaic.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates was among those who pushed for the inaugural prize to be granted to internet pioneers.
"It
would be difficult to point to any significant human endeavour that has
not been touched profoundly through the invention and deployment of the
internet," he said.
"We are living today in only the beginning of the transformations that will come through this enabling technology."
Around a third of the world's population use the internet today, according to UN figures.
The
Queen Elizabeth Prize was created last year in a bid to boost the
industry's profile and give greater recognition to the revolutionary
impact it has on people's lives.
"Engineers are
often the unsung heroes whose innovations have made phenomenal
contributions to society," said the award's director Anji Hunter.
"We
need more skilled engineers to solve the world's most pressing
problems, which requires not only excellent education and inspirational
role models, but more attention focused on highlighting the wonders of
modern engineering, wherever they may be," she added.
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