Creating the world wide web didn't make Tim Berners-Lee instantly rich or famous. In part, that's because the Web sprang from relatively humble technologies. Berners-Lee's invention was based on an information retrieval program called Enquire (named after a Victorian book, Enquire Within upon Everything), which he wrote in 1980 as a contract programmer at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland. In part, it's because Berners-Lee did the unthinkable when, more than a decade later, he finished writing the tools that defined the Web's basic structure: he gave them away, with CERN's blessing, no strings attached. While others made millions off his invention, the soft-spoken programmer went on to found the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at MIT, which he still directs, to promote global Web standards and development.

Berners-Lee is finally getting his reward: in July he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II, and the previous month he received Finland's million-euro Millennium Technology Prize, awarded "for outstanding technological achievements that directly promote people's quality of life, are based on humane values, and encourage sustainable economic development."