The demise of Bell Labs is saddening from both a physics and computer science perspective. It feels like all too often, large corporations like AT&T and GE, once huge innovation engines, have been dismantled due to greed and incompetence, with outstanding institutions like Bell Labs left by the wayside. Hopefully, Google et al will pick up the slack and foster these kinds of environments.
I'm somewhat amused to find out that Bjarne Stroustrup and Ken Thompson worked next door to each other after reading the interview with Thompson in Coders at Work.
Dr.Holzmann (who currently heads reliability group at JPL) notes: "from the 30-some people shown on this map, just a few remained to witness the final disappearance of center 1127 from the bell labs org charts in august 2005: rae mclellan, howard trickey (since moved to google) and dennis ritchie (now retired). one by one, the others all found a safe haven elsewhere."