| The UNIX time-sharing system DM Ritchie, K Thompson Communications of the ACM 17 (7), 365-375, 1974 | 2401* | 1974 |
| Password security: A case history R Morris, K Thompson Communications of the ACM 22 (11), 594-597, 1979 | 1584 | 1979 |
| Programming techniques: Regular expression search algorithm K Thompson Communications of the ACM 11 (6), 419-422, 1968 | 1559 | 1968 |
| Reflections on trusting trust K Thompson Communications of the ACM 27 (8), 761-763, 1984 | 1128 | 1984 |
| Flexible, configurable, hierarchical system for distributing programming PM Allen, JW Davis, MJ Maslaney, K Mai, HL Paulk, K Thompson US Patent 5,892,535, 1999 | 500 | 1999 |
| Plan 9 from bell labs R Pike, D Presotto, K Thompson, H Trickey Proceedings of the summer 1990 UKUUG Conference, 1-9, 1990 | 411 | 1990 |
| Plan 9 from bell labs R Pike Computing systems 8 (3), 221-254, 1995 | 380 | 1995 |
| UNIX time-sharing system: UNIX Implementation K Thompson The Bell System Technical Journal 57 (6), 1931-1946, 1978 | 351 | 1978 |
| Distributed computing system RC Pike, KL Thompson US Patent 5,623,666, 1997 | 316 | 1997 |
| Retrograde analysis of certain endgames. K Thompson J. Int. Comput. Games Assoc. 9 (3), 131-139, 1986 | 281 | 1986 |
| The use of name spaces in Plan 9 R Pike, D Presotto, K Thompson, H Trickey, P Winterbottom ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review 27 (2), 72-76, 1993 | 240 | 1993 |
| The UNIX time-sharing system K Thompson, DM Ritchie Communications of the ACM 17 (7), 365-375, 1974 | 135 | 1974 |
| unix Programmer's Manual K Thompson, DM Ritchie Bell Telephone Laboratories, 1975 | 127 | 1975 |
| Computer chess strength K Thompson Advances in computer chess 3, 55-56, 2014 | 117 | 2014 |
| Belle chess hardware JH Condon, K Thompson Advances in computer chess, 45-54, 1982 | 98 | 1982 |
| Plan 9, a distributed system D Presotto, R Pike, K Thompson, H Trickey Proc. of the Spring, 43-50, 1991 | 90 | 1991 |
| 6-piece endgames K Thompson ICGA Journal 19 (4), 215-226, 1996 | 87 | 1996 |
| Reading chess HS Baird, K Thompson IEEE Transactions on pattern analysis and machine intelligence 12 (6), 552-559, 1990 | 86 | 1990 |
| File system with components shared between separately addressable versions KL Thompson US Patent 5,457,796, 1995 | 65 | 1995 |
| Comparing information retrieval systems and Smalltalk with BrinLye R Stearns, EO Shastri, R Rivest, K Thompson, S Martin Proceedings of PLDI, 2003 | 62 | 2003 |
