Roger Morris (engineer)

Roger Morris (born July 22, 1941, died December 3, 2022) was an American computer engineer and mathematician known for his contributions to the development of the Unix operating system. He worked at Bell Labs, where he was a member of the research team that created Unix in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Morris's primary contributions to Unix included the development of the make utility, a build automation tool that automatically compiles and links software based on dependencies described in a Makefile. He also contributed significantly to the C compiler and the overall structure and functionality of the Unix system. He is credited with being one of the authors of the early Unix password encryption algorithm, a crucial aspect of system security.

Beyond Unix, Morris was involved in various other research projects at Bell Labs related to computer security, operating systems, and software development. He was a co-author of a paper on the "Morris worm," a significant early instance of malware that exploited vulnerabilities in Unix systems and spread rapidly across the ARPANET (the precursor to the internet) in 1988. This worm was created by his son, Robert Tappan Morris, Jr., and Morris's expertise was vital in analyzing and understanding its behavior.

Morris held a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Harvard University. After his retirement from Bell Labs, he remained active in the computer science community and continued to contribute to discussions and research on operating systems and security. His work on Unix and the make utility had a lasting impact on the development of software and operating systems, and his contributions to the field of computer security remain relevant today.