Kenneth L. Thompson
- Birthdate
- 1943
- Birthplace
- New Orleans, LA, USA
- Associated organizations
- Bell Labs
- Fields of study
- Computing
- Awards
- IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award, IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal
Biography
Ken Thompson was born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1943. He attended the University of California at Berkeley and received B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering in 1965 and 1966, respectively.
In 1966 he joined Bell Laboratories, as a Member of the Technical Staff, where he has worked to the present. However, he returned to the University of California at Berkeley as a Visiting Mackay Lecturer in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences where he taught Computer Science for the 1975-1976 academic year.
Mr. Thompson is one of the principal designers of the UNIX time-sharing system. The publication "The UNIX Time-Sharing System", of which he was co-author with Dennis Ritchie, received the ACM's award for the best paper in the field of programming systems and languages in 1974. He is also one of the principal designers of the current World Computer Chess Champion, "Belle."
Ken is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the Association for Computing Machinery, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and chess societies. He is married to the former Bonnie Perlmutter and they have one son, Corey.
