Dennis Ritchie, C programming language creator, dies aged 70

October 14, 2011

The programming language creator and co-developer of the  operating system  died at home on October 8 after an extended illness, at the age of 70. Former colleague first publicly announced the death, which  then confirmed.

Ritchie, born in on September 9, 1941, joined  in 1967. There, with, he helped develop Unix, an operating system on which are based many modern systems such as and. Unix provided the infrastructure that led the creation of the Internet. Between 1969 and 1973 he developed the C, one of the most used programming languages, that influenced many languages like, , and. After Unix was rewritten, C was key to its. In 2007 he retired from his post as Bell Labs' head of systems software research.

Ritchie and Thompson were awarded the in 1983, the  in 1990, the  in 1998, and the  in 2011.