Kenneth Lane Thompson (born February 4, 1943), commonly
referred to as ken in hacker circles is an American pioneer of computer
science.Kenneth Lane Thompson was the principal inventor of UNIX. Even
today, more than 35 years later, UNIX and its descendants are still
widely regarded as the best computer operating systems to have ever been
developed.He received a Bachelor of Science in 1965 and a master's
degree in 1966, both in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science,
from the University of California, Berkeley, where his master's thesis
advisor was Elwyn Berlekamp.Having worked at Bell Labs for most of his
career.Thompson designed and implemented the original Unix operating
system.In the 1960s, Thompson and Dennis Ritchie worked on the Multics
operating system. While writing Multics, Thompson created the Bon
programming language. The two left the Multics project when Bell Labs
withdrew from it, but they used the experience from the project, and in
1969, Thompson and Ritchie became the principal creators of the Unix
operating system.Thompson decided that Unix needed a system programming
language and created B, a precursor to Ritchie's C language.Thompson was
elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1980 for designing
UNIX, an operating system whose efficiency, breadth, power, and style
have guided a generation's exploitation of minicomputers.
Lessons we learn from Ken Thompson
Thompson,
like Linus Torvalds, the founder of Linux, is another example of
history being shaped by the right person being ready at the right
time.It is also an example of how a single person with an idea and
dedication can accomplish something that eludes large organizations with
huge concentrations of talent and massive budgets.He created great
works not with any intention for personal profit but rather because of
their dedication to their craft and their desire to improve it, with the
result that the world is also improved.
