(This is a lightly edited version of an article by Ryan Tomayko (original no longer online). Used with permission.)
Brother: Hey, I have a question for you… Who is “Roy Fielding”?
ME: Some guy. He's smart.
Brother: Oh? What did he do?
ME: He helped write the first web servers, that sent documents across the internet… and then he did a ton of research explaining why the web works the way it does. His name is on the specification for the protocol that is used to get pages from servers to your browser.