Kenneth Lane Thompson

Ken Thompson (left) with Dennis Ritchie
Born	February 4, 1943 New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
Field	Computer Science
Institution	Bell Labs Entrisphere, Inc Google Inc.
Known for	UNIX Bon programming language
Notable prizes	Turing Award National Medal of Technology Tsutomu Kanai Award

Kenneth Thompson redirects here. The name may also refer to Kenneth Thompson (hockey), Kenneth Thomson, 2nd Baron Thomson of Fleet, businessman G. Kennedy Thompson or Sir Kenneth Thompson, 1st Baronet.

Kenneth Lane Thompson (born February 4, 1943), commonly referred to as Ken Thompson (or simply Ken in hacker circles), is an American pioneer of computer science notable for his work with the B programming language and his shepherding the UNIX and Plan 9 from Bell Labs operating systems. Photo of UNIX creators Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie. ... Dennis Ritchie Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie (born September 9, 1941) is a computer scientist notable for his influence on ALTRAN, B, BCPL, C, Multics, and Unix. ... February 4 is the 35th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1943 (MCMXLIII) was a common year starting on Friday (the link is to a full 1943 calendar). ... New Orleans is the largest city in the state of Louisiana, United States of America. ... Official language(s) de jure: none de facto: English & French Capital Baton Rouge Largest city Baton Rouge [1] Area  Ranked 31st  - Total 51,885 sq mi (134,382 km²)  - Width 130 miles (210 km)  - Length 379 miles (610 km)  - % water 16  - Latitude 29°N to 33°N  - Longitude 89°W... Computer science, or computing science, is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer systems. ... Bell Laboratories (also known as Bell Labs and formerly known as AT&T Bell Laboratories and Bell Telephone Laboratories) was the main research and development arm of the United States Bell System. ... This page is about Google Inc. ... Filiation of Unix and Unix-like systems Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX®) is a computer operating system originally developed in the 1960s and 1970s by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and Douglas McIlroy. ... Bon was a programming language created by Ken Thompson while he worked on the MULTICS operating system. ... The A.M. Turing Award is given annually by the Association for Computing Machinery to a person selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community. ... The National Medal of Technology is an honor granted by the President of the United States to inventors and innovators that have made significant contributions to the development of new and important technology. ... Kenneth Thompson (Born - in Oakengates, UK) was a British professional ice hockey centre who played 1 season in the National Hockey League for the Montreal Wanderers. ... Kenneth Roy Thomson, 2nd Baron Thomson of Fleet (1 September 1923 – 12 June 2006) was a Canadian businessman and art collector who, at the time of his death, was the ninth richest person in the world, according to Forbes. ... G. Kennedy Ken Thompson (born November 25, 1950) is the current CEO, President, and Chairman of Wachovia Bank. ... Sir Kenneth Pugh Thompson, 1st Baronet (24 December 1909 – 4 January 1984) was a British company director and politician from Liverpool. ... February 4 is the 35th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1943 (MCMXLIII) was a common year starting on Friday (the link is to a full 1943 calendar). ... Hacker is a term applied often to computer software or computer hardware programmers, designers and administrators, and especially those who are perceived as experts or highly accomplished. ... Computer science, or computing science, is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer systems. ... Filiation of Unix and Unix-like systems Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX®) is a computer operating system originally developed in the 1960s and 1970s by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and Douglas McIlroy. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

Biography

Thompson was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. He received a Bachelor of Science in 1965 and 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. New Orleans is the largest city in the state of Louisiana, United States of America. ... Official language(s) de jure: none de facto: English & French Capital Baton Rouge Largest city Baton Rouge [1] Area  Ranked 31st  - Total 51,885 sq mi (134,382 km²)  - Width 130 miles (210 km)  - Length 379 miles (610 km)  - % water 16  - Latitude 29°N to 33°N  - Longitude 89°W... A Bachelor of Science (B.S., B.Sc. ... A masters degree is an academic degree usually awarded for completion of a postgraduate (or graduate) course of one to three years in duration. ... EECS (sometimes pronounced eeks) is an abbreviation for Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences. ... Sather tower (the Campanile) looking out over the San Francisco Bay and Mount Tamalpais. ... Elwyn Ralph Berlekamp (born September 6, 1940 in Dover, Ohio) is a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley. ...

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 as it was becoming too complex, but they took the lessons they learned to Bell Labs, where, in 1969, Thompson and Ritchie were the principal creators of the UNIX operating system. There, Thompson also wrote the B programming language, a precursor to Ritchie's C. Dennis Ritchie Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie (born September 9, 1941) is a computer scientist notable for his influence on ALTRAN, B, BCPL, C, Multics, and Unix. ... Multics (Multiplexed Information and Computing Service) was an extraordinarily influential early time-sharing operating system. ... Bon was a programming language created by Ken Thompson while he worked on the MULTICS operating system. ... Bell Laboratories (also known as Bell Labs and formerly known as AT&T Bell Laboratories and Bell Telephone Laboratories) was the main research and development arm of the United States Bell System. ... For the Stargate SG-1 episode, see 1969 (Stargate SG-1). ... Filiation of Unix and Unix-like systems Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX®) is a computer operating system originally developed in the 1960s and 1970s by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and Douglas McIlroy. ... An operating system (OS) is a set of computer programs that manage the hardware and software resources of a computer. ... B was the name of a programming language developed at Bell Labs. ... C is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative computer programming language developed in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system. ...

Thompson had developed the CTSS version of the editor QED, which included regular expressions for searching text. QED and Thompson's later editor ed (the default editor on Unix) contributed greatly to the eventual popularity of regular expressions, previously regarded mostly as a tool (or toy) for logicians. Regular expressions became pervasive in Unix text processing programs (such as grep). Almost all programs that work with regular expressions today use some variant of Thompson's notation for them. CTSS, which stood for the Compatible Time-Sharing System, was one of the first time-sharing operating systems; it was developed at MITs Computation Center. ... QED is a line-oriented computer text editor. ... In computing, a regular expression is a string that is used to describe or match a set of strings, according to certain syntax rules. ... The text editor ed was the original standard on the Unix operating system. ... A logician is a philosopher, mathematician, or other whose topic of scholarly study is logic. ... grep is a command line utility that was originally written for use with the Unix operating system. ...

Along with Joseph Condon, he created the hardware and software for Belle, a chess computer. He also wrote programs for generating the complete enumeration of chess endings, for all 4, 5, and 6-piece endings, allowing chess-playing computer programs to make "perfect" moves once a position stored in them is reached. Later, with the help of chess endgame expert John Roycroft, Thompson distributed his first results on CD-ROM. Belle was the name of a chess computer developed by J. H. Condon and Ken Thompson in the early 1980s. ... The idea of creating a chess-playing machine dates back to the eighteenth century. ... Chess is a recreational and competitive game for two players. ... John Roycroft (born June 29, 1954) is a champion full contact mixed martial arts kickboxer with a record of 20 wins and 4 losses. ...

Thompson's style of programming has influenced others, notably in the terseness of his expressions and a preference for clear statements.

In late 2000, Thompson retired from Bell Labs. He worked at Entrisphere, Inc as a fellow until 2006, and now works at Google. It has been suggested that this article be split into multiple articles accessible from a disambiguation page. ... Google, Inc. ...

Awards

Turing Award

In 1983, Thompson and Ritchie jointly received the Turing Award for their development of generic operating systems theory and specifically for the implementation of the UNIX operating system. His acceptance speech, "Reflections on Trusting Trust" presented the backdoor attack now known as the Thompson hack, and is widely considered a seminal computer security work in its own right. 1983 (MCMLXXXIII) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The A.M. Turing Award is given annually by the Association for Computing Machinery to a person selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community. ... A backdoor in a computer system (or cryptosystem or algorithm) is a method of bypassing normal authentication or securing remote access to a computer, while attempting to remain hidden from casual inspection. ... A backdoor in a computer system (or cryptosystem or algorithm) is a method of bypassing normal authentication or securing remote access to a computer, while attempting to remain hidden from casual inspection. ... This article describes how security can be achieved through design and engineering. ...

National Medal of Technology

Thompson, Ritchie and Clinton

On April 27, 1999, Thompson and Ritchie jointly received the 1998 National Medal of Technology from President Bill Clinton for co-inventing the UNIX operating system and the C programming language which together have led to enormous advances in computer hardware, software, and networking systems and stimulated growth of an entire industry, thereby enhancing American leadership in the Information Age ^{[1] [2]} Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1500x1086, 240 KB) Summary Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie being awarded the National Medal of Technology from Bill Clinton Licensing File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1500x1086, 240 KB) Summary Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie being awarded the National Medal of Technology from Bill Clinton Licensing File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... William Jefferson Bill Clinton (born William Jefferson Blythe III[1] on August 19, 1946) was the 42nd President of the United States, serving from 1993 to 2001. ... April 27 is the 117th day of the year (118th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 248 days remaining. ... 1999 (MCMXCIX) was a common year starting on Friday, and was designated the International Year of Older Persons by the United Nations. ... 1998 (MCMXCVIII) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year of the Ocean [1]. // Coated in ice, power and telephone lines sag and often break, resulting in power outages. ... The National Medal of Technology is an honor granted by the President of the United States to inventors and innovators that have made significant contributions to the development of new and important technology. ... William Jefferson Bill Clinton (born William Jefferson Blythe III[1] on August 19, 1946) was the 42nd President of the United States, serving from 1993 to 2001. ...

Tsutomu Kanai Award

In 1999, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers chose Thompson to receive the first Tsutomu Kanai Award for his role in creating the UNIX operating system, which for decades has been a key platform for distributed systems work. ^[3] 1999 (MCMXCIX) was a common year starting on Friday, and was designated the International Year of Older Persons by the United Nations. ... The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers or IEEE (pronounced as eye-triple-e) is an international non-profit, professional organization for the advancement of technology related to electricity. ...

Quotes

• "When in doubt, use brute force."
• "We have persistent objects, they're called files."
• "One of my most productive days was throwing away 1000 lines of code."
• "If you want to go somewhere, goto is the best way to get there."
• "The X server has to be the biggest program I've ever seen that doesn't do anything for you."
• "The act of breaking into a computer system has to have the same social stigma as breaking into a neighbor's house."

In computer science, a brute-force search consists of systematically enumerating every possible solution of a problem until a solution is found, or all possible solutions have been exhausted. ... KDE 3. ...

References

1. ^ Ritchie and Thompson [to] Get National Medal of Technology Bell Labs pre-announcement
2. ^ Ritchie and Thompson Receive National Medal of Technology from President Clinton Bell Labs press release
3. ^ Ken Thompson Receives Kanai Award for Impact of UNIX System Bell Labs press release

External links

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Kenneth Thompson

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• Ken Thompson Bell Labs page
• ACM Classic: Reflections on Trusting Trust
• Video of Thompson and Ritchie receiving the National Medal of Technology award
• Photos Computer Chess Comes of Age (Computer History Museum)
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• Photo - with Garry Kasparov
• Video of Interview with Ken Thompson Computer Chess Comes of Age (Computer History Museum) (alternative)
• Unix and Beyond: An Interview with Ken Thompson by IEEE Computer Society
• Transcript of an interview with Ken Thompson – Interview by Michael S. Mahoney
• Jargon file entry on Ken Thompson