Dennis Ritchie
More info
- Born
- Died
- Known for
- Created C, co-created Unix
- Awards
- Turing Award 1983
Created C and helped build Unix — two things that together form the foundation of nearly all software running today.
Ritchie developed C at Bell Labs in the early 1970s out of Ken Thompson's language B. The decisive move was rewriting Unix in C in 1973: until then operating systems were written in assembly and tied to one machine. A portable operating system was a new thing, and it is why the Unix lineage has survived every hardware generation since.
The C Programming Language, written with Brian Kernighan in 1978, is among the most influential programming books ever published, and its "hello, world" is the genre's standard opening. Ritchie died in October 2011, days after Steve Jobs, which meant his death went almost unnoticed outside the field.