Ken Thompson
{{Copyedit|date=August 2008}}{{otherpersons|Ken Thompson}}
| birth_place =
New Orleans,
Louisiana,
United States| death_date = | death_place = | residence = | citizenship =| nationality = | ethnicity =| field =
Computer Science| work_institution =
Bell LabsEntrisphere, Inc
Google Inc.| alma_mater = | doctoral_advisor = | doctoral_students = | known_for =
UnixB (programming language)Belle (chess machine)| author_abbreviation_bot = | author_abbreviation_zoo = | prizes =
Turing AwardNational Medal of TechnologyTsutomu Kanai Award| religion = | footnotes = }}
Kenneth Lane Thompson (born
February 4 1943), commonly referred to as
Ken Thompson (or simply
ken in
hacker circles){{Fact|date=July 2008}}, is an American pioneer of
computer science notable for his work with the
B programming language and his shepherding the
Unix and
Plan 9 operating systems.
Biography
Thompson was born in
New Orleans,
Louisiana,
U.S.. 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.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.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), and even in some modern programming languages like
Perl; they are a central concept in
Rob Pike's
sam text editor. Almost all programs that work with regular expressions today use some variant of Thompson's notation for them.Thompson also developed
UTF-8 (a widely used character encoding) together with
Rob Pike in
1992.Along with Joseph Condon, he created the hardware and software for
Belle, a world champion
chess computer. He also wrote programs for generating the complete enumeration of
chess endings, known as
endgame tablebases, 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.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 as a Distinguished Engineer.
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.
National Medal of Technology
missing image!
- Medal lg.jpeg -
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) 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)== ==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."
- "The moral is obvious. You can't trust code that you did not totally create yourself. (Especially code from companies that employ people like me.) No amount of source-level verification or scrutiny will protect you from using untrusted code."
References
-
[Ritchie and Thompson [to] Get National Medal of Technology Bell Labs pre-announcement]
-
[Ritchie and Thompson Receive National Medal of Technology from President Clinton Bell Labs press release]
-
[Ken Thompson Receives Kanai Award for Impact of UNIX System Bell Labs press release]
External links
{{Spoken Wikipedia|Ken_Thompson_(computer_programmer).ogg|2006-06-17}}
{{Richard W. Hamming Medal recipients}}{{Turing award}}{{Persondata|NAME= Thompson, Kenneth Lane|ALTERNATIVE NAMES=|SHORT DESCRIPTION=
Computer Science1943 | 4|mf=y}} | New Orleans, Louisiana, United States>U.S.|DATE OF DEATH= |PLACE OF DEATH= }}كين تومسنকেন টম্পসনKen ThompsonKen ThompsonKenneth ThompsonKen ThompsonKen ThompsonKen Thompsonکنت تامسونKenneth ThompsonKen ThompsonKen Thompson켄 톰프슨Ken ThompsonKen ThompsonKen ThompsonKenneth Lane Thompsonകെന് തോംപ്സണ്केन थॉम्प्सनKen Thompsonケン・トンプソンKen ThompsonKen ThompsonKen ThompsonKen ThompsonТомпсон, КенKen ThompsonKenneth ThompsonКен ТомпсонKen ThompsonKen ThompsonKen Thompson肯·汤普逊 |
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