Nicola Pellow

{{short description|British information scientist who worked on the early World Wide Web}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}

{{Infobox scientist

| name = Nicola Pellow

| image =

| caption = Nicola Pellow with Tim Berners-Lee in their office at CERN in Switzerland, 1992

| birth_date =

| birth_place =

| death_date =

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| field = Information technology

| work_institutions = CERN

| alma_mater = Leicester Polytechnic

| influences =

| influenced =

| known_for = Line Mode Browser
MacWWW

}}

Nicola Pellow is an English mathematician and information scientist who was one of the nineteen members of the WWW Project at CERN working with Tim Berners-Lee.{{cite web|title=Ten Years Public Domain for the Original Web Software|url=http://tenyears-www.web.cern.ch/tenyears-www/Story/WelcomeStory.html|publisher=CERN|access-date=21 July 2010|archive-date=29 June 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170629132328/http://tenyears-www.web.cern.ch/tenyears-www/Story/WelcomeStory.html|url-status=dead}} She joined the project in November 1990, while an undergraduate maths student enrolled on a sandwich course at Leicester Polytechnic (now De Montfort University).{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/howwebwasbornsto00gill|url-access=registration|quote=nicola pellow.|title=How the Web was Born: The Story of the World Wide Web|author1=Gillies, James |author2=Cailliau, R. |publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2000|isbn=0192862073|pages=[https://archive.org/details/howwebwasbornsto00gill/page/6 6]}} Pellow recalled having little experience with programming languages, "... apart from using a bit of Pascal and FORTRAN as part of my degree course."

Almost immediately after Berners-Lee completed the WorldWideWeb web browser for the NeXT platform [https://www.w3.org/MarkUp/tims_editor A screenshot from TBL's first web browser] Pellow was tasked with creating a browser using her recently acquired skills in the C programming language. The outcome was that she wrote the first generic Line Mode Browser[http://line-mode.cern.ch/www/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html A view from Nicola Pellow's line mode browser]{{Cite web|url=https://home.cern/about/updates/2013/09/dream-team-web-developers-recreate-line-mode-browser|title=Dream team of web developers to recreate line-mode browser {{!}} CERN|website=home.cern|access-date=2016-11-02}}{{Cite journal|last1=Berners-Lee|first1=T.J.|last2=Cailliau|first2=R.|last3=Groff|first3=J.F.|date=1992|title=The World-Wide Web|url=https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs344g/www-1992.pdf|journal=Computer Networks and ISDN Systems|volume=25|issue=4–5|pages=458|doi=10.1016/0169-7552(92)90039-S}} that could run on non-NeXT systems.{{Cite web

| last = Lasar

| first = Matthew

| title = Before Netscape: the forgotten Web browsers of the early 1990s

| work = Ars Technica

| access-date = 2014-01-08

| date = 2011-10-11

| url = https://arstechnica.com/business/2011/10/before-netscape-forgotten-web-browsers-of-the-early-1990s/

}} The WWW team began to improve on her work, creating several experimental versions.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=trxEAwAAQBAJ&q=%22nicola+pellow+leicester+polytechnic&pg=PA415|title=The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution|last=Isaacson|first=Walter|date=2014-10-07|publisher=Simon and Schuster|isbn=9781476708713|pages=415|language=en}} Pellow was involved in porting the browser to different types of computers.

She left CERN at the end of August 1991 but returned after graduating in 1992 to work with Robert Cailliau on MacWWW,{{Cite web|url=http://www.internet-guide.co.uk/MacWWW.html|title=MacWWW: the first web browser for the Apple Macintosh platform|website=www.internet-guide.co.uk|access-date=2016-11-02}}[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/77/MacWWWscreenshot.gif Screenshot of the first Mac web browser] the first web browser for the classic Mac OS.{{cite web|first=Bill|last=Stewart|title=Web Browser History|url=http://www.livinginternet.com/w/wi_browse.htm|publisher=Living Internet |date=2015 |access-date=21 March 2017}}{{cite web|last=Berners-Lee|first=Tim|title=Macintosh Browser|date=3 November 1992|url=http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/Macintosh/Status.html|publisher=World Wide Web Consortium|access-date=2 June 2010}}