It’s hard to do justice (but we’ll try) to the impact Mary Berners-Lee had on the world. It’s not going too far to say her life’s work impacted everyone on Earth, whether their tech habits, salary or working habits.
Mary is most notable for her work that pioneered the development of the internet, that was released in its first iteration by her son, Tim Berners-Lee, in 1989. A development probably comparable to the discovery of fire or invention of the wheel. But her impact extends further than her contribution to the internet.
Mary was born in Hall Green in Birmingham in 1924. She excelled at Yardley Grammar School, and was encouraged by her parents to go into further education. In the late 1940s, Mary worked as an astronomer in Australia, eventually returning to the UK in the early 1950s to retrain as a computer scientist at the University of Manchester.
Mary worked on the development of early computers, building on the work of famous enigma code breaker Alan Turing.
In 1951, Mary was part of the programming team who developed the first computer to be sold commercially. During this role, Mary became frustrated at the difference in pay between male and female programmers. She campaigned for equal pay, and won rises for her female colleagues.
Mary juggled motherhood and her profession throughout the 1950s. She became one of the first ‘freelancers’ in the world and was decades ahead of her time in terms of working from home (a more recent change the rest of us have seen to our working habits).
Known as the Grandmother of the Web, Mary’s son, Tim, built on his mother’s work (and no doubt attitude that she instilled in him) and in 1989 he created the first system to access and share documents - what we would know as the internet.
Ahead of her time as a computer scientist, working women and mother - Mary was certainly one of Birmingham’s greatest.
-
-