Dennis Ritchie

Dennis Ritchie
Dennis Ritchie at the Japan Prize Foundation in May 2011
Born
Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie

(1941-09-09)September 9, 1941
Diedc. October 12, 2011(2011-10-12) (aged 70)
Alma materHarvard University (BS)
Known forALTRAN
iB
BCPL
C
Multics
Unix
AwardsIEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award (1982)[1]
Turing Award (1983)
National Medal of Technology (1998)
IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal (1990)
Computer Pioneer Award (1994)
Computer History Museum Fellow (1997)[2]
Harold Pender Award (2003)
Japan Prize (2011)
Scientific career
FieldsComputer science
InstitutionsLucent Technologies
Bell Labs
Doctoral advisorPatrick C. Fischer
Websitebell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/

Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie (September 9, 1941 – c. October 12, 2011) was an American computer scientist.[3] He created the C programming language and, with long-time colleague Ken Thompson, the Unix operating system and B programming language.[3] Ritchie and Thompson were awarded the Turing Award from the ACM in 1983, the Hamming Medal from the IEEE in 1990 and the National Medal of Technology from President Bill Clinton in 1999.

Ritchie was the head of Lucent Technologies System Software Research Department when he retired in 2007.

  1. ^ "IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award Recipients" (PDF). IEEE. Archived from the original (PDF) on November 24, 2010. Retrieved March 20, 2021.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Computerhistory was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference NYTimes was invoked but never defined (see the help page).