Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie | |
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Dennis Ritchie, 2011
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Born |
Bronxville, New York, U.S. |
September 9, 1941
Died |
c. October 12, 2011 Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, U.S. |
(aged 70)
Nationality | American |
Fields | Computer science |
Institutions |
Lucent Technologies Bell Labs |
Alma mater | Harvard University (Ph.D., 1968) |
Known for |
ALTRAN B BCPL C Multics Unix |
Notable awards |
Turing Award (1983) National Medal of Technology (1998) IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal (1990) Computer Pioneer Award (1994) Computer History Museum Fellow (1997) Harold Pender Award (2003) Japan Prize (2011) |
Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie (September 9, 1941 – c. October 12, 2011) was an American computer scientist. 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 Bill 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, and commonly known by his username dmr.
Dennis Ritchie was born in Bronxville, New York. His father was Alistair E. Ritchie, a longtime Bell Labs scientist and co-author of The Design of Switching Circuits on switching circuit theory. As a child, Dennis moved with his family to Summit, New Jersey, where he graduated from Summit High School. He graduated from Harvard University with degrees in physics and applied mathematics.