bugün

c programlama dilinin öncüsü sayılan b diline geliştiren ve unix işletim sisteminin tasarlanmasında emeği geçen ünlü bilgisayar bilimci. unix'in geliştirilmesinde ki katkılarından dolayı Dennis Ritchie ile birlikte turing ödülü aldı(1983). bell labs ta rob pike ile birlikte utf 8 karakter setinin oluşturulmasında ve plan 9 adlı işletim sisteminin geliştirilmesinde çalıştı. 2000 yılında bell labs tan emekli oldu. şu anda google da çalışmaktadır.
Kasparov'un bir zamanlar santranç maçı yaptığı süper bilgisayarın (bkz: deep blue) satranç programını yazanlardan birisidir.
kendisini tanıyan eski nasa görevlisi Eugene Miya'nın ken Thompson hakkında bir kaç soruya verdiği cevabı aşağıda bulabilirsiniz.

--->What is Ken Thompson like in real life?

Ken is kind of quiet. He's into audio. He's thoughtful. He's a space nut (he gave me his copy of his astro(1) program after I had Bob Morris sky(6) program). He's smart. He likes to fly in his plane. He's tired of talking about Unix (questions of history). He appreciates people knowing other things he's done. He has many other colleagues. I sent him a photo I took in Germany, which he got grins. He enjoys being with other hacker buddies. He's not into AI. He appreciates the Turing award he got with dmr. I phoned him up before version 7 when when that was possible to do that kind of thing. He's a born Navy brat. I don't know him super well. I'm leaving a few things out for his privacy, so people don't bug him

--->What was it like to work with Ken Thompson?

I never visited Murray Hill, but Ken is by his own admission a space nut. He's got a few other personal interests which are well known. It's too bad that other parts of NASA treated his work so poorly.

I was asked by another colleague about contact information for Ken. My advice when talking to Ken is "Don't bring up the history of Unix." That's old water under the bridge. He has other interests (well known due to media coverage).

The one time his interest perked up on a suggested talk topic was on Belle. He gave a wonderful talk to about 100 people (not recorded, but a paper with Joe Condon exists). We had him fork a bunch of time ls -R / > /dev/null & on the first Cray running Unix. He declared "Fast". We later did his and Rob Pike's sqrt(2) dc(1) benchmark. They got their own X-MP to later run that port. Belle is now a long time ago (a decade before Kasparov was beaten, but that's another story).

His friends protect his privacy. Ken's met other Turing winners on a somewhat consistent basis like Knuth, and I think Ken was introduced to Larry Page before taking the job at google.
türk olsaydı keşke dediğim bilim insanı.
eğer bu adamı tanısaydınız ortalarda ben bilgisayar dahisiyim diye dolaşalara küfür ederdiniz.