Bjarne Stroustrup (/ˈbjɑːrnə ˈstrɒvstrʊp/ ^ⓘ; Danish: [ˈbjɑːnə ˈstʁʌwˀstʁɔp]; born 30 December 1950) is a Danish computer scientist, known for the development of the C++ programming language. He led the Large-scale Programming Research department at Bell Labs, served as a professor of computer science at Texas A&M University, and spent over a decade at Morgan Stanley while also being a visiting professor at Columbia University. Since 2022 he has been a full professor at Columbia.

Stroustrup was born in Aarhus, Denmark. His family was working class, and he attended local schools.

He attended Aarhus University from 1969 to 1975 and graduated with a Candidatus Scientiarum in mathematics with computer science. His interests focused on microprogramming and machine architecture. He learned the fundamentals of object-oriented programming from its inventor, Kristen Nygaard, who frequently visited Aarhus.

In 1979, he received his PhD in computer science from the University of Cambridge, where his research on distributed computing was supervised by David Wheeler.

In 1979, Stroustrup began his career as a member of technical staff in the Computer Science Research Center of Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey. There, he began his work on C++ and programming techniques. Stroustrup was the head of AT&T Bell Labs' Large-scale Programming Research department, from its creation until late 2002. In 1993, he was made a Bell Labs fellow and in 1996, an AT&T Fellow.

From 2002 to 2014, Stroustrup was the College of Engineering Chair Professor in Computer Science at Texas A&M University. From 2011, he was made a University Distinguished Professor.

From January 2014 to April 2022, Stroustrup was a technical fellow and managing director in the technology division of Morgan Stanley in New York City and a visiting professor in computer science at Columbia University.

Since 2021, Bjarne Stroustrup has been a Technical Advisor to Metaspex, a company developing a new C++ programming approach for business applications.