Ken Thompson

Kenneth ("Ken") Lane Thompson (born 1943), co-developed the Unix operating system with Dennis Ritchie while at Bell Labs. Thompson also wrote the B programming language, and the sequel to that was Ritchie's development of the C programming language.

Thompson also developed text editors, first QED and then later Unix's ed. This work led to the use of regular expressions on Unix in its text processing programs, including grep.

Thompson also created a computer (hardware and software) to play chess, and was assisted by Joseph Condon and later John Roycroft in this effort.