Ken Thompson

Ken Thompson (born 1943) is an American computer scientist and co-creator of the Unix operating system and the C programming language. He played a key role in the development of the original Unix system, including the creation of important tools and utilities. Thompson's work has had a lasting impact on the field of operating systems and software development.

Created the Unix operating system, the B programming language, Plan 9 operating system, the first machine to achieve a Master rating in chess, and the UTF-8 encoding at Bell Labs and the Go programming language at Google.

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.

• Kenneth Lane Thompson (born February 4, 1943) is an American pioneer of computer science.
• 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.
• In 1983, he won the Turing Award with his long-term colleague Dennis Ritchie.