Web pioneers win inaugural $1.9 mn engineering prize

LONDON (AFP) - Five engineers who helped create the Internet were on Monday awarded a US$1.5 million (S$1.9 million) prize which British organisers hope will come to be seen as equivalent to a Nobel prize for engineering.

Robert Kahn, Vinton Cerf and Marc Andreessen of the United States will share the first ever £1 million Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering with Louis Pouzin of France and Tim Berners-Lee of Britain.

"The emergence of the Internet and the web involved many teams of people all over the world," said Alec Broers, chair of the judging panel.

"However, these five visionary engineers, never before honoured together as a group, led the key developments that shaped the Internet and web as a coherent system and brought them into public use."