The five engineers who were instrumental in the creation of the Internet and the World Wide Web, today received their award for the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering at Buckingham Palace from Her Majesty the Queen Elizabeth II. In addition to members of the royal family, three leaders of the UK’s main political parties and the judges of the prize were in the audience. As a member of the jury, the Scientific Executive Director of the GFZ Prof. Dr. Reinhard Huettl also took part in the ceremony.

Robert Kahn, Vint Cerf and Louis Pouzin were honored for their contributions to the protocols that make up the fundamental architecture of the Internet. Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, Marc Andreessen wrote the code for the first Mosaic browser.

Prof. Huettl said: “The Queen Elizabeth Prize, which is regarded as a Nobel Prize for Engineering, honors a technology that should in fact be considered as a revolution. The Internet in connection with the World Wide Web has already taken a stronger influence on our daily lives than we actually perceive. This is ultimately also true for our research field of geosciences. In the official statement of the chairman of the jury, he incidentally named early warning systems for natural disasters as an example of this rapid development, in particular the field of tsunami early warning."

The winners each received a trophy designed by the 17-year-old Jennifer Leggett. She had won a national competition that called for young students to come up with a design that captured the essence of modern engineering.

For more information:

Homepage of the Queen Elizabeth Prize: www.qeprize.org

Interview with Prof. Dr. Huettl about the QEP (GeoForschungsZeitung, May 2013): ebooks.gfz-potsdam.de/pubman/item/escidoc:117114/component/escidoc:117115/GFZeitung_2013_05_6-7.pdf