UNIX history made easy

[Bennett Todd]

In article <8600002 at kolmogorov>, ari at kolmogorov writes:
>
>In my field, physics, I don't know every Nobel prize lauriate,
>(sure, I know many, but not near most).  There are some
>who won, that I can't remember what for, and then there
>are some physicist who didn't win, that I think have.

I think folks are missing the point here. The Turing Award is important,
though perhaps not as important in some absolute sense as the Nobel
Prize. However, the question was about a new hire with a degree in
Computer Science who had *never heard* of Ken Thompson.

Depending on your background and interests you might or might not be
expected to have an extensive background in UNIX; however there is a
long list of names that should at least be familiar. Besides Thompson
and Ritchie and Kernighan and Pike and all that gang I would tend to
expect that computer scientists would have at least *heard* of Grace
Hopper, Fred Brooks, Andy Tanenbaum, and many others. Likewise I would
be surprised at a physicist who hadn't *heard* of Nobel, Pauli,
Rutherford, Feynman, and several zillion others. The point is that a
good background in Computer Science should in *my* opinion (though not
that of some Computer Science departments!) include a reasonable
exposure to high points of the practice of computer science in its
history, as well as the theory.  Sure, unless your interests lean in
that particular direction you might be little more than vaguely familiar
with the name, but at least that much seems reasonable to expect!

I haven't tried to make a list, so this part here is pure guesswork, but
I would tend to expect that most computer scientists would at least
recognize some 40 or 50 names of scientists who made major, fundamental
contributions to the art, over and above the potentially very long list
of specialists in your chosen field.

-Bennett
bet at orion.mc.duke.edu