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Early life and education

Kernighan was born in Toronto. He attended the University of Toronto between 1960 and 1964, earning his bachelor's degree in engineering physics.⁸ He received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Princeton University in 1969, completing a doctoral dissertation titled "Some graph partitioning problems related to program segmentation" under the supervision of Peter G. Weiner.⁹¹⁰

Career and research

Kernighan has held a professorship in the department of computer science at Princeton since 2000.¹¹ Each fall he teaches a course called "Computers in Our World", which introduces the fundamentals of computing to non-majors.¹²¹³

Kernighan was the software editor for Prentice Hall International. His "Software Tools" series spread the essence of "C/Unix thinking" with makeovers for BASIC, FORTRAN, and Pascal, and most notably his "Ratfor" (rational FORTRAN) was put in the public domain.

He has said that if stranded on an island with only one programming language it would have to be C.¹⁴

Kernighan coined the term "Unix" and helped popularize Thompson's Unix philosophy.¹⁵ Kernighan is also known for coining the expression "What You See Is All You Get" (WYSIAYG), which is a sarcastic variant of the original "What You See Is What You Get" (WYSIWYG).¹⁶ Kernighan's term is used to indicate that WYSIWYG systems might throw away information in a document that could be useful in other contexts.

In 1972, Kernighan described memory management in strings using "hello" and "world", in the B programming language,¹⁷ which became the iconic example we know today. Kernighan's original 1978 implementation of hello, world! was sold at The Algorithm Auction, the world's first auction of computer algorithms.¹⁸

In 1996, Kernighan taught CS50 which is the Harvard University introductory course in computer science. Kernighan was an influence on David J. Malan who subsequently taught the course and scaled it up to run at multiple universities and in multiple digital formats.¹⁹

Kernighan was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2002 for contributions to software and to programming languages. He was also elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019.²⁰²¹

In 2022, Kernighan stated that he was actively working on improvements to the AWK programming language, which he took part in creating in 1977.²²

Books and reports

• The Elements of Programming Style, with P. J. Plauger
• Software Tools, a book and set of tools for Ratfor, co-created in part with P. J. Plauger
• Software Tools in Pascal, a book and set of tools for Pascal, with P. J. Plauger
• The C Programming Language, with C creator Dennis Ritchie, the first book on C
• The Practice of Programming, with Rob Pike
• The Unix Programming Environment, a tutorial book, with Rob Pike
• "Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language", a popular criticism of Niklaus Wirth's Pascal. Some parts of the criticism are obsolete due to ISO 7185 (Programming Languages - Pascal); the criticism was written before ISO 7185 was created. (AT&T Computing Science Technical Report #100)
• UNIX: A History and a Memoir, a historical account of the development of Unix from the perspective of his role at Bell Labs

Programs

• 1972: The first documented "Hello, world!" program, in Kernighan's "A Tutorial Introduction to the Language B"
• 1973: ditroff, or "device independent troff", which allowed troff to be used with any device
• 1974: The eqn typesetting language for troff, with Lorinda Cherry²³
• 1976: Ratfor²⁴
• 1977: The m4 macro processing language, with Dennis Ritchie
• 1977: The AWK programming language, with Alfred Aho and Peter J. Weinberger, and its book The AWK Programming Language
• 1985: The AMPL programming language
• 1988: The pic typesetting language for troff²⁵

Publications

• The Elements of Programming Style (1974, 1978) with P. J. Plauger
• Software Tools (1976) with P. J. Plauger
• The C Programming Language (1978, 1988) with Dennis M. Ritchie
• Software Tools in Pascal (1981) with P. J. Plauger
• The Unix Programming Environment (1984) with Rob Pike
• The AWK Programming Language (1988, 2023) with Alfred Aho and Peter J. Weinberger
• The Practice of Programming (1999) with Rob Pike
• AMPL: A Modeling Language for Mathematical Programming, 2nd ed. (2003) with Robert Fourer and David Gay
• D is for Digital: What a well-informed person should know about computers and communications (2011)²⁶
• The Go Programming Language (2015) with Alan Donovan²⁷
• Understanding the Digital World: What You Need to Know about Computers, the Internet, Privacy, and Security (2017)
• Millions, Billions, Zillions: Defending Yourself in a World of Too Many Numbers (2018)
• UNIX: A History and a Memoir (2019)²⁸

See also

• List of pioneers in computer science

External links

• Brian Kernighan's home page at Bell Labs
• Lex Fridman Podcast #109: Brian Kernighan - UNIX, C, AWK, AMPL, and Go Programming
• "Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language" — By Brian Kernighan, AT&T Bell Labs, 2 April 1981
• "Leap In and Try Things" — Interview with Brian Kernighan — on "Harmony at Work Blog", October 2009.
• An Interview with Brian Kernighan — By Mihai Budiu, for PC Report Romania, August 2000
• "Transcript of an interview with Brian Kernighan". Archived from the original on 2009-04-28. Retrieved 2016-03-31. – Interview by"Michael S. Mahoney". Archived from the original on 2009-05-28. Retrieved 2016-03-31.
• Video — TechNetCast At Bell Labs: Dennis Ritchie and Brian Kernighan (1999-05-14)
• Video (Princeton University, September 7, 2003) — "Assembly for the Class of 2007: 'D is for Digital and Why It Matters'"
• A Descent into Limbo by Brian Kernighan
• Photos of Brian Kernighan
• Works by Brian Kernighan at Open Library
• Video interview with Brian Kernighan for Princeton Startup TV (2012-03-20)
• The Setup, Brian Kernighan
• Hello, World! A collection of Kernighan's opinion columns from The Daily Princetonian, 2006–2013.

References

1. Pike, Rob (7 November 2018). "The History of Unix". YouTube. Archived from the original on 2021-11-23. Retrieved 2 May 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2NI6t2r_Hs&t=36m55s ↩

2. Nerd Talk - Doug McIlroy & Brian Kernighan, 22 October 2021, retrieved 2023-12-16 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe5ffO6Ouwg&t=18 ↩

3. The Library of Congress. "Kernighan, Brian W. - LC Linked Data Service: Authorities and Vocabularies | Library of Congress, from LC Linked Data Service: Authorities and Vocabularies (Library of Congress)". id.loc.gov. Retrieved 3 March 2023. https://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n50044563.html ↩

4. Dolya, Aleksey (29 July 2003). "Interview with Brian Kernighan". Linux Journal. http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7035 ↩

5. Brian Kernighan author profile page at the ACM Digital Library https://dl.acm.org/author_page.cfm?id=81100397511 ↩

6. "An Oral History of Unix". 2007-06-11. Archived from the original on 2007-06-11. Retrieved 2020-05-13. https://web.archive.org/web/20070611235312/http://www.princeton.edu/%7Emike/unixhistory.htm ↩

7. "Brian Kernighan | Computer Science Department at Princeton University". www.cs.princeton.edu. Retrieved 2020-05-13. https://www.cs.princeton.edu/people/profile/bwk ↩

8. Dolya, Aleksey (29 July 2003). "Interview with Brian Kernighan". Linux Journal. http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7035 ↩

9. "Brian Kernighan - The Mathematics Genealogy Project". www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu. Retrieved 2020-05-13. https://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=82029 ↩

10. Kernighan, Brian W. (1969). Some graph partitioning problems related to program segmentation. https://catalog.princeton.edu/catalog/1528336 ↩

11. "Brian Kernighan | Computer Science Department at Princeton University". https://www.cs.princeton.edu/people/profile/bwk ↩

12. Kernighan, Brian. "COS 109, Fall 2021: Home Page". www.cs.princeton.edu. Retrieved 2022-08-23. The course will have fundamentally the same structure as in previous years, but lectures, case studies and examples change every year according to what's happening. https://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/fall21/cos109/ ↩

13. Kernighan, Brian. "COS 109: Computers in our world" (PDF). Princeton Education. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-03-25. https://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/fall14/cos109/01intro.pdf ↩

14. Budiu, Mihai (July 2000). "An Interview with Brian Kernighan". http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~mihaib/kernighan-interview/index.html ↩

15. McIlroy, M. D. (1987). A Research Unix reader: annotated excerpts from the Programmer's Manual, 1971–1986 (PDF) (Technical report). CSTR. Bell Labs. 139. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-10-09. /wiki/Doug_McIlroy ↩

16. "Brian Kernighan: Geek of the Week". Simple Talk. 2010-05-19. Retrieved 2019-02-05. https://www.red-gate.com/simple-talk/opinion/geek-of-the-week/brian-kernighan-geek-of-the-week/ ↩

17. "THE PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE B". Bell Laboratories. 16 October 2021. Archived from the original on 2015-06-11. https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/bintro.html ↩

18. "Brian Kernighan – Hello World". Artsy. Retrieved 18 June 2015. https://www.artsy.net/artwork/brian-kernighan-hello-world ↩

19. Malan, David J. (2010). "Reinventing CS50". Proceedings of the 41st ACM technical symposium on Computer science education. pp. 152–156. doi:10.1145/1734263.1734316. ISBN 9781450300063. 9781450300063 ↩

20. "Dr. Brian W. Kernighan". NAE Website. Retrieved 2020-05-13. https://nae.edu/30184/Dr-Brian-W-Kernighan ↩

21. "Brian W. Kernighan". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved 2020-05-13. https://www.amacad.org/person/brian-w-kernighan ↩

22. "Unix legend, who owes us nothing, keeps fixing foundational AWK code". Ars Technica. 23 August 2022. Retrieved 2023-05-12. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/unix-legend-who-owes-us-nothing-keeps-fixing-foundational-awk-code/ ↩

23. McIlroy, M. D. (1987). A Research Unix reader: annotated excerpts from the Programmer's Manual, 1971–1986 (PDF) (Technical report). CSTR. Bell Labs. 139. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-10-09. /wiki/Doug_McIlroy ↩

24. McIlroy, M. D. (1987). A Research Unix reader: annotated excerpts from the Programmer's Manual, 1971–1986 (PDF) (Technical report). CSTR. Bell Labs. 139. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-10-09. /wiki/Doug_McIlroy ↩

25. McIlroy, M. D. (1987). A Research Unix reader: annotated excerpts from the Programmer's Manual, 1971–1986 (PDF) (Technical report). CSTR. Bell Labs. 139. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-10-09. /wiki/Doug_McIlroy ↩

26. D is for Digital: What a well-informed person should know about computers and communications ISBN 1463733895 /wiki/ISBN_(identifier) ↩

27. Brian Kernighan and Alan Donovan (2015) The Go Programming Language ISBN 0134190440 /wiki/ISBN_(identifier) ↩

28. UNIX: A History and a Memoir ISBN 1695978552 /wiki/ISBN_(identifier) ↩