Ken Thompson is an American computer scientist who, with Dennis Ritchie, created the Unix operating system at Bell Labs beginning in 1969, and who designed the B programming language that Ritchie developed into C. Thompson and Ritchie shared the 1983 ACM Turing Award for their work on Unix; Thompson later co-created the Go programming language at Google.
Facts
AwardNational Inventors Hall of Fame 3 AwardIEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal 3 AwardComputer History Museum Fellow 3 AwardIEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award 3 AwardNational Medal of Technology and Innovation 3 AwardACM Software System Award 3 Connections
Associated With
Source Wikipedia: Regular expression
Source Wikipedia: Rob Pike
In Field
Source Computer History Museum
Invented
Source Wikidata: B (programming language)
Source Wikipedia: Go (programming language)
Source Wikidata: Research Unix
Unix, Systems Source ACM A.M. Turing Award Citations
In the Other Atlases
Nationality
Also in Geography Atlas: the nationality of this subject.
Sources
1. Computer History Museum
Computer History Museum1997 Fellow citation
For his co-creation, with Dennis Ritchie, of the UNIX operating system, and for development of the C programming language
- In Field: Operating Systems
View the Source 2. Wikipedia: Ken Thompson
Wikimedia FoundationEarly life and education
Thompson worked at Bell Labs for most of his career where he designed and implemented the original Unix operating system.
Infobox: birth_place
New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.
View the Source 3. Ken Thompson (Wikidata)
Wikidata P166: Harold Pender Award
Wikidata P166 (award received): Harold Pender Award.
Wikidata P166: National Inventors Hall of Fame
Wikidata P166 (award received): National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Wikidata P166: IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal
Wikidata P166 (award received): IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal.
Wikidata P166: Turing Award
Wikidata P166 (award received): Turing Award.
Wikidata P166: ACM Fellow
Wikidata P166 (award received): ACM Fellow.
Wikidata P166: Computer History Museum Fellow
Wikidata P166 (award received): Computer History Museum Fellow.
Wikidata P166: Computer Pioneer Award
Wikidata P166 (award received): Computer Pioneer Award.
Wikidata P166: IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award
Wikidata P166 (award received): IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award.
Wikidata P166: Tsutomu Kanai Award
Wikidata P166 (award received): Tsutomu Kanai Award.
Wikidata P166: Japan Prize
Wikidata P166 (award received): Japan Prize.
Wikidata P166: National Medal of Technology and Innovation
Wikidata P166 (award received): National Medal of Technology and Innovation.
Wikidata P166: ACM Software System Award
Wikidata P166 (award received): ACM Software System Award.
View the SourceACM A.M. Turing Award Citations
Association for Computing MachineryCitation
With Dennis M. Ritchie, for their development of generic operating systems theory and specifically for the implementation of the UNIX operating system.
- Invented: Unix
View the Source Wikipedia: Go (programming language)
Wikipedia: Regular expression
Wikimedia FoundationAssociated With: Regular Expression, HistoryQuote, Associated With: Regular Expression, History
Regular expressions entered popular use from 1968 in two uses: pattern matching in a text editor and lexical analysis in a compiler. Among the first appearances of regular expressions in program form was when Ken Thompson built Kleene's notation into the editor QED as a means to match patterns in text files.
Wikipedia: Rob Pike
Wikimedia FoundationAssociated With: Rob Pike, Lead sectionQuote, Associated With: Rob Pike, Lead section
With Ken Thompson, he is the co-creator of UTF-8 character encoding.
Wikidata: Research Unix
Invented: Research Unix, Wikidata Q2666693 P178 (developer) claim -> Q1107006 (Ken Thompson); computing atlas pioneer entity 262616, checked 2026-09-28View the Source Reader Challenges (0)
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