Robert Cailliau

Robert Cailliau (b. 26 January, 1947) is one of the co-developers of the World Wide Web.

Related Topics:
26 January - 1947 - Developer - World Wide Web

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Cailliau was born in Tongeren, Belgium. In 1958 he moved with his parents to Antwerp. After secondary school he graduated from Ghent University in 1969 as civil engineer in electrical and mechanical engineering (Burgerlijk Werktuigkundig en Elektrotechnisch ingenieur). He also has an MSc from the of University of Michigan in Computer, Information and Control Engineering, 1971.

Related Topics:
Belgium - 1958 - Antwerp - Ghent University - 1969 - MSc - University of Michigan - 1971

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In December 1974 he started working at CERN as a Fellow in the Proton Synchrotron (PS) division, working on the control system of the accelerator. In April 1987 he left the PS division to become group leader of Office Computing Systems in the Data Handling division. In 1989, he and Tim Berners-Lee independently proposed a hypertext system for access to the CERN documentation. This led to a common proposal in 1990 and then to the World Wide Web.

Related Topics:
1974 - CERN - 1987 - 1989 - Tim Berners-Lee - Hypertext - World Wide Web

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In 1993, in collaboration with the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft Cailliau started the European Commission's first web-based project for information dissemination in Europe. In December 1993 he called for the first International WWW Conference which was held at CERN in May 1994. That conference has met yearly ever since.

Related Topics:
Fraunhofer Gesellschaft - European Commission

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After helping to transfer the web development from CERN to the W3C, he devoted his time to public communication. He left CERN in 2005.

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Cailliau is a synaesthete.

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