Ken Thompson

E31846

Ken Thompson is an American computer scientist best known as a co-creator of the Unix operating system and the B programming language, and for his foundational contributions to modern computing.

All labels observed (5)

How this entity was disambiguated

Statements (66)

Predicate Object
instanceOf computer scientist
human
programming language designer
software engineer
awardReceived ACM SIGOPS Hall of Fame Award
Computer History Museum Fellow Award
IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award
IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal
Japan Prize
National Medal of Technology
Turing Award
USENIX Lifetime Achievement Award
birthDate 1943-02-04
birthPlace New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
linked to: New Orleans
coCreatorOf B programming language
Go programming language runtime (early work)
linked to: Go

Inferno operating system
Plan 9 from Bell Labs
UTF-8
Unix
collaboratedWith Brian Kernighan
Dennis Ritchie
Rob Pike
coRecipientWith Dennis Ritchie
countryOfCitizenship United States of America
degree Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
Master of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
developed Thompson's algorithm
Thompson's construction
educatedAt University of California, Berkeley
employer Bell Labs
Bell Telephone Laboratories
Google
era 20th-century computing
21st-century computing
familyName Thompson
fieldOfWork computer science
computer security
operating systems
programming languages
fullName Kenneth Lane Thompson
linked to: Ken Thompson
gender male
givenName Kenneth
influenced C programming language design via B
modern Unix-like operating systems
software security thinking
knownFor Thompson's algorithm for regular expression matching
Thompson's construction for converting regular expressions to NFAs
co-creating the UTF-8 character encoding
co-creating the Unix operating system
co-designing the B programming language
early work on the Plan 9 from Bell Labs operating system
the "Reflections on Trusting Trust" lecture and paper
work on the Inferno operating system
languageSpoken English
memberOf Bell Labs Computing Sciences Research Center
notableIdea compiler backdoor attack described in "Reflections on Trusting Trust"
notableWork B programming language
Inferno
Plan 9 from Bell Labs
Reflections on Trusting Trust
UTF-8
Unix
receivedAwardFor Turing Award for the development of generic operating systems theory and the implementation of the Unix operating system
linked to: Turing Award
residence United States
thesisTitle Regular Expression Search Algorithm

How these facts were elicited

Referenced by (26)

Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.

Go designedBy Ken Thompson
Thompson hasNotableBearer Ken Thompson (computer scientist)
linked to: Ken Thompson
Ken Thompson fullName Kenneth Lane Thompson
linked to: Ken Thompson
Dennis Ritchie collaboratedWith Ken Thompson
Unix developer Ken Thompson
Rob Pike coInventorWith Ken Thompson
Robert Griesemer coDesignedWith Ken Thompson
B developer Ken Thompson
Reflections on Trusting Trust author Ken Thompson
Reflections on Trusting Trust author Kenneth Thompson
linked to: Ken Thompson
B programming language developer Ken Thompson
UTF-8 designedBy Ken Thompson
Plan 9 from Bell Labs developer Ken Thompson
Thompson's algorithm creator Ken Thompson
Brian Kernighan notableStudent Ken Thompson (as colleague, not student)
linked to: Ken Thompson
PDP-7 usedBy Ken Thompson
ed developer Ken Thompson
subject linked to: ED
Martin Richards influenced Ken Thompson
Cuckoo mainCharacter Ken Thompson