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Mike Berners-Lee

British professor and ecologist (1964-)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 22, 2026
Entity authorityQ60677509
Source-derived summary

Mike Berners-Lee is an English researcher and writer on carbon footprinting. He is a professor in Practice at Lancaster University and director and principal consultant of Small World Consulting, based in the Lancaster Environment Centre at the university. His books include How Bad are Bananas?, The Burning Question, There Is No Planet B and A Climate of Truth, and he is a contributing author to The Climate Book created by Greta Thunberg. He is considered an expert on carbon footprints.

Early life and education

He was born in 1964 and is the son of Mary Lee Woods and Conway Berners-Lee, who were both mathematicians and computer scientists. One of his brothers is computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web.

He graduated in physics from University of Oxford in 1986, gained a PGCE in Physics and Outdoor Education at Bangor University in 1988, and has a master's in Organisation Development and Consulting from Sheffield Hallam University (2001). He has been a professor in Practice at Lancaster University since 2016.

Carbon accounting

Berners-Lee has pioneered carbon accounting of upstream carbon emissions from supply chains, known as scope 3 emissions, to assess the full greenhouse gas emissions of products. His work at Small World Consulting has combined Process-based Life Cycle Analysis with Environmentally Extended Input-Output Analysis to achieve both a system-complete estimate of the supply chain and specificity in key areas.

Editorial summary

“Mike Berners-Lee” enters the record as british professor and ecologist (1964-). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Mike, Berners-Lee and British can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1964, 1986, 1988, 2001—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1964-01-01. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Mike, Berners-Lee and British.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Mike Berners-Lee” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Mike, Berners-Lee and British provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q60677509. VIAF identifies the subject as 157525388. The Library of Congress control number is no2010122272. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1964, 1986, 1988 and 2001.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

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Three-step research path

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  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Mike Berners-Lee” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.