Dennis Ritchie
Pioneering computer scientist, co-creator of Unix and the C programming language.
Chronology: 1941-09-09 – 2011-10-12
Origins & Early Life
Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie (September 9, 1941 – c. October 12, 2011) was an American computer scientist. He created, together with long-time colleague Ken Thompson, the Unix operating system, C programming language, and B programming language. == Early life and education == Dennis Ritchie was born in Bronxville, New York.
Pivotal Works & Achievements
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 in 1963. == Career == In 1967, Ritchie began working at the Bell Labs Computing Science Research Center.
Enduring Legacy & Impact
In 1968, he completed a draft of his PhD thesis on "Computational Complexity and Program Structure" at Harvard under the supervision of Patrick C. Fischer. However, Ritchie never officially received his PhD degree. In 2020, the Computer History Museum worked with Ritchie's family and Fischer's family and found a copy of the lost dissertation. During the 1960s, Ritchie and Ken Thompson worked on the Multics operating system at Bell...
Source: Wikipedia