Five internet pioneers have shared the first £1.5 million Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, is among those who will receive the prize from the Queen at a ceremony in June.

He is joined by Marc Andreessen, who co-wrote the world's first web browser Mosaic. Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf, who built the TCP and IP protocols upon which the internet functions and Louis Pouzin, upon whose research they work, round out the first group of winners.

Nicknamed the 'Nobel Prize of engineers', the Queen Elizabeth Prize was established to celebrate engineering work which is of 'global benefit to humanity'.

Berners-Lee said on Twitter he was honoured to receive and share the prize:


Tim Berners-Lee
Very honoured w Louis, Vint, Bob & Marc be awarded 1st for -- credit to coders, standards geeks

The Prize committee said:

"Five engineers who created the internet and the World Wide Web… revolutionised the way we communicate and enabled the development of whole new industries.

Today a third of the world’s population use the Internet and it is estimated to carry around 330 Petabytes of data per year, enough to transfer every character ever written in every book ever published 20 times over."

The announcement was made by Lord Browne of Madingley at the Royal Academy of Engineering.