Ken Thompson

American programmer and computer scientist, co-creator of the Unix operating system (born 1943) · United States · Developers

Ken Thompson is read about 675 times a day, in 57 languages.

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Kenneth Lane Thompson is an American pioneer of computer science. Thompson worked at Bell Labs for most of his career where he designed and implemented the original Unix operating system.

A life in dates

2020ACM FellowAward2019National Inventors Hall of FameAward2011“When the three of us [Thompson, Rob Pike, and Robert Griesemer] got started, it was pure research. The three of us got together and decided that we hated C++. [laughter] ...”In their wordsKen Thompson, talking about the origins of the Go programming languageRead the whole statement

Japan PrizeAward2009“[C++] certainly has its good points. But by and large I think it's a bad language.”In their wordsKen Thompson; cited inRead the whole statement

2003Harold Pender AwardAward1999“I am a very bottom-up thinker. If you give me the right kind of Tinker Toys, I can imagine the building.”In their words"Unix and Beyond: An Interview with Ken Thompson," 1999Read the whole statement

“Unix was a very small, understandable OS, so people could change it at their will. It would run itself - you could type "go" and in a few minutes it would recompile itself.”In their words"Unix and Beyond: An Interview with Ken Thompson," 1999Read the whole statement

“I view Linux as something that's not Microsoft - a backlash against Microsoft, no more and no less. I don't think it will be very successful in the long run.”In their words"Unix and Beyond: An Interview with Ken Thompson," 1999Read the whole statement

“Anything new will have to come along with the type of revolution that came along with Unix. Nothing was going to topple IBM until something came along that made them irrelevant.”In their words"Unix and Beyond: An Interview with Ken Thompson," 1999Read the whole statement

Tsutomu Kanai AwardAward1998National Medal of Technology and InnovationAward1997Computer History Museum FellowAward1994Computer Pioneer AwardAward1990IEEE Richard W. Hamming MedalAward1983ACM Software System AwardAwardTuring AwardAward1982IEEE Emanuel R. Piore AwardAward1943Born4 February 1943

Also in Deutsch

Photos 4

DEC PDP-7, as used for initial work on Unix

Version 6 Unix running on the SIMH PDP-11 simulator, with "/usr/ken" still present

Plan 9 from Bell Labs, running the acme text editor, and the rc shell

In their own words 10

Ken Thompson

10 statements, newest first

When the three of us [Thompson, Rob Pike, and Robert Griesemer] got started, it was pure research. The three of us got together and decided that we hated C++. [laughter] ...
2011, Ken Thompson, talking about the origins of the Go programming language, Own words
I would try out the [C++] language [at AT&T] as it was being developed and make comments on it. It was part of the work atmosphere there.
2009, Ken Thompson; cited in, Own words
[C++] certainly has its good points. But by and large I think it's a bad language.
2009, Ken Thompson; cited in, Own words

Wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0

Awards

ACM Fellow2020

National Inventors Hall of Fame2019

Japan Prize2011

Harold Pender Award2003

Tsutomu Kanai Award1999

National Medal of Technology and Innovation1998

Computer History Museum Fellow1997

Computer Pioneer Award1994

IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal1990

Turing Award1983

ACM Software System Award1983

IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award1982

About this person

Kenneth Lane Thompson is an American pioneer of computer science. Thompson worked at Bell Labs for most of his career where he designed and implemented the original Unix operating system. He also invented the B programming language, the direct predecessor to the C language, and was one of the creators and early developers of the Plan 9 operating system. Other notable contributions included his work on regular expressions and early computer text editors QED and ed, the definition of the UTF-8 encoding, and his work on computer chess that included the creation of endgame tablebases and the chess machine Belle.

Country

United States

In common with Ken

James GoslingBoth received Tsutomu Kanai Award

Developers from the United States 5

Jef Raskin57.0 Gary Kildall56.9 Keith Packard57.1

Bill Joy56.7

Peter Mattis57.3

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