Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie | |
|---|---|
Dennis Ritchie, 1999 | |
| Born | September 9, 1941 Bronxville, New York, U.S. |
| Died | October 12, 2011 (aged 70) |
| Alma mater | Harvard University |
| Known for | ALTRAN B BCPL C Multics Unix |
| Awards | Turing Award National Medal of Technology |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Computer science |
| Institutions | Lucent Technologies Bell Labs |

Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie (September 9, 1941–October 12, 2011), was an American computer scientist who "helped shape the digital era." He created the C programming language and, with long-time colleague Ken Thompson, the UNIX operating system. Ritchie and Thompson received the Turing Award from the ACM in 1983, the Hamming Medal from the IEEE in 1990 and the National Medal of Technology from President Clinton in 1999. Ritchie was the head of Lucent Technologies System Software Research Department when he retired in 2007. He was the 'R' in K&R C.
Dennis M. Ritchie, who helped shape the modern digital era by creating software tools that power things as diverse as search engines like Google and smartphones, was found dead on Wednesday at his home in Berkeley Heights, N.J. He was 70. Mr. Ritchie, who lived alone, was in frail health in recent years after treatment for prostate cancer and heart disease, said his brother Bill.
Pioneering computer scientist Dennis Ritchie has died after a long illness. ... The first news of Dr Ritchie's death came via Rob Pike, a former colleague who worked with him at Bell Labs. Mr Ritchie's passing was then confirmed in a statement from Alcatel Lucent which now owns Bell Labs.
I just heard that, after a long illness, Dennis Ritchie (dmr) died at home this weekend. I have no more information.
Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie, computer scientist, born 9 September 1941; died 12 October 2011
Media related to Dennis Ritchie at Wikimedia Commons