Brian Kernighan¹ (born 1942) is a computer scientist who worked at the Bell Labs and contributed to the design of the pioneering AWK and AMPL programming languages.

Kernighan's name became widely known through co-authorship of the first book on the C programming language with Dennis Ritchie. Kernighan has said that he had no part in the design of the C language: "It's entirely Dennis Ritchie's work". He authored many Unix programs, including ditroff.

The "K" of K&R C and the "K" in the name AWK derive from "Kernighan."

He was born in Toronto, Ontario, and received his Bachelor's degree in Engineering Physics from the University of Toronto. He received a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Princeton University, where as of 2004 he holds a professorship in the department of computer science.

(¹ 'Kernighan' is pronounced Ker'-ni-han; the 'g' is silent)

External links

• Brian Kernighan's home page at Princeton U.
• "Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language" – By Brian Kernighan, AT&T Bell Labs, 2 April 1981
• An Interview with Brian Kernighan – By Mihai Budiu, for PC Report Romania, August 2000
• Interview with Brian Kernighan – By Aleksey Dolya, for Linux Jounal, July 2003.