History of Computers - Brian Kernighan
Contents
Introduction
Brian Kernighan was born in Toronto Canada in 1942 and went on to earn his BA in engineering physics from the University of Toronto in 1946 and went on to earn a PhD in electrical engineering from Princeton in 1969. He is a computer scientist who was one of the key founders/documenters of the C programming language, and recently died in 2011
Overview
after joining Bell Labs and working alongside other computer greats such as Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, he worked a variety of different positions like combinatorial optimization, document preparation systems, software tools, and most notably as a worker on programming languages. He first rose to the computer nerd limelight by co-authoring the first book ever written on the C programming language, something that he did no necessarily design but did help to write and explore. This C programming language is a computer language for use with the Unix operating system to write system and application software and is one of the most popular computer languages of all time. It was later added upon in extension named C++ and is still used today. He went on to design a plethora of programs, an operating system still used a bit today. He was the software editor for Prentice Hall International, who is a very well known publisher mainly for educational books. Recently he taught classes as Princeton and was a professor in the computer science section since 2000.
Significance
Brian Kernighan changed the computer technology and programming scene forever with his work on the C programming language. This programming tool was made to be a straightforward language and it helped launch the Unix operating system. His computer accomplishments have made their mark on computer history forever and he is sorely missed.
