Ken Thompson has been fascinated by logic since childhood. As he noted later, even in elementary school, he would solve arithmetic problems in the binary system. This love led him to the computer world, where his achievements were incomparable and always original.
Ken Thompson: study
In 1943, Ken was born in New Orleans (Louisiana). In his youth, Ken Thompson studied at the University of California , Berkeley. In the years 1965-1966, first received a bachelor's and master's degree in science in electronic devices and information systems. Its supervisor was Alvin Berlemkamp.
Jobs at Bell Labs
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In 1969, Thompson and Ritchie developed the UNICS OS, which later received the modern name UNIX. Thompson created the Qed editor for CTSS, which included regular expressions for manipulating lines in text. This project has made regular expressions popular in programming, not just logic. They began to be constantly used in UNIX in word processing programs. Nowadays, most regular expression programs use Thompson notation. Ken also invented an algorithm that got his name for transforming regular expressions into a non-deterministic finite state machine.Work on chess programs
Since the 18th century, people have been trying to create chess machines. The attempt succeeded in 1983 when Thompson and Condon created Belle, the first computer to reach the level of a chess master. Thompson wrote a program for a complete listing of endgames for 4–6 figures.
Later, with the help of chess expert John Roycroft, he recorded them on a CD-ROM. The new advanced chess computer in 1994 beat Garry Kasparov.
Further activities
In the mid-80s, Thompson at Bell Labs began designing a new OS, which was supposed to be a replacement for UNIX. It was called "plan 9". Also at this time, he was testing early versions of the C ++ language, but expressed a negative attitude towards him, not endorsing the ideas that formed the basis of the language.
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In 1983, Thompson and Ritchie together received the Turing Award. In 1990, he was awarded the Richard Hamming Medal from IEEE for the creation of the UNIX OS and the C language. In 1994, the Pioneer of Computer Hardware medal, also in conjunction with Ritchie.
In 1999, President Bill Clinton awarded the Thompson and Ritchie National Medal. In 1999, Thompson received the first prize from the Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers for his role in creating the UNIX OS, and in 2003, together with Ritchie, received the Harold Pender Prize. Japan also noted its innovative developments (2011 Prize).