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Ken Thompson
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Ken Thompson

Co-creator of Unix and the B language, and co-designer of Go

4 February 1943 United States Verified by our editors
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Age
83 yrs
Birthday in 90 days
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4
Operating system, Programming language
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Most recent 2011
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Ken Thompson is an American computer scientist who created the Unix operating system with Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs. He also designed the B language, co-invented the UTF-8 text encoding and co-created Google’s Go language. He shared the 1983 Turing Award with Ritchie.

Biography

Bell Labs

Thompson studied electrical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and joined Bell Labs in 1966, where he worked on the Multics operating system project.

Creating Unix

After Bell Labs left Multics, Thompson wrote a simpler operating system on a spare PDP-7 computer in 1969. With Dennis Ritchie it became Unix, whose ideas — small tools combined with pipes, a hierarchical file system and portability — underlie Linux, macOS, Android and iOS.

Languages and text

He created the B language, the direct predecessor of C, and wrote early regular-expression tools such as ed and grep’s ancestor. In 1992, with Rob Pike, he designed UTF-8, now the dominant way text is encoded on the web.

Chess and Go

With Joe Condon he built Belle, a chess computer that won the 1980 World Computer Chess Championship. At Google from 2006 he co-designed the Go programming language with Rob Pike and Robert Griesemer, released in 2009.

Timeline

  1. 1943

    Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States

  2. 1966

    Joins Bell Labs

  3. 1969

    Writes the first Unix on a PDP-7

  4. 1970

    Creates the B language

  5. 1980

    Belle wins the World Computer Chess Championship

  6. 1983

    Turing Award with Dennis Ritchie

  7. 1992

    Designs UTF-8 with Rob Pike

  8. 2009

    Go language released

Notable works

  • 1969

    Unix Operating system

  • 1969

    B Programming language

  • 1984

    Reflections on Trusting Trust Turing lecture

    A classic essay on hidden backdoors in compilers.

  • 2009

    Go Programming language

Awards and honours

  • Turing Award

    1983

  • IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal

    1990

  • National Medal of Technology

    1998

  • Japan Prize

    2011

Did you know?

  1. 1

    He wrote the first Unix in about three weeks while his family was on holiday.

  2. 2

    UTF-8 was sketched on a placemat in a New Jersey diner.

  3. 3

    His Turing lecture “Reflections on Trusting Trust” is still required reading in security.

Connections

Related people

Also born on 4 February

Frequently asked

Who is Ken Thompson?

Ken Thompson is an American computer scientist who created the Unix operating system with Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs. He also designed the B language, co-invented the UTF-8 text encoding and co-created Google’s Go language. He shared the 1983 Turing Award with Ritchie.

How old is Ken Thompson?

Ken Thompson is 83 years old, born on 4 February 1943 in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States.

Where is Ken Thompson from?

Ken Thompson was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States.

What is Ken Thompson known for?

Ken Thompson is best known for Unix; the B language; UTF-8; Go; Belle chess machine; Turing Award 1983.

What awards has Ken Thompson received?

Notable honours include Turing Award (1983), IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal (1990), National Medal of Technology (1998), Japan Prize (2011).

References

  1. Ken Thompson — Wikipedia. Wikipedia. Retrieved 4 November 2026.
  2. Ken Thompson — Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved 4 November 2026.
  3. Ken Thompson — Hindi Wikipedia. Wikipedia (Hindi). Retrieved 4 November 2026.
  4. Official website. cs.bell-labs.co. Retrieved 4 November 2026.
  5. Ken Thompson (Q1107006) — structured data. Wikidata. Retrieved 4 November 2026.

Includes material from the Wikipedia article “Ken Thompson”, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. That text is available under the same licence. Learn more

External links

Official website Website Wikipedia
Filed under Bell LabsGo (programming language)Turing AwardUnix Computer ScientistProgrammer

About this profile

Cite this page

“Ken Thompson.” TrackFame, last updated 5 November 2026. https://trackfame.com/person/ken-thompson

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