Dennis Ritchie
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 and B programming language. 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. He was the "R" in K&R C, and commonly known by his username dmr.
Life in a Timeline
- Sept 9, 1941
Birth
Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie born in Bronxville, New York. - 1963
BS Degree from Harvard & Job at Multi timersharing Project
Recieved BS degree in Physics from Harvard. Ritchie had a part-time job at MIT Project MAC's Multics timersharing project. - 1967
Hired at Bell Labs
Joined Bell Labs Computing Sciences Research Center. Started working on Multics OS. - 1968
PhD from Harvard
Recieved PhD in Applied Mathematics from Harvard. - 1969
Bells Labs withdrew from Multics project
Bell Labs removes themselves from the Multics OS project that Ritchie and Thompson were working on. Ritchie aided Thompson in producing this single-memory OS. Starts work on UNIX. Ritchie noted:"It began in 1969 when Ken Thompson discovered a little-used PDP-7 computer and set out to fashion a computing environment that he liked. Thompson wrote the first version of Unix for a Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-7 in a month, using a cross-assembler that ran on GECOS. The PDP-7 he used had 4K of 18-bit words. His work soon attracted me; I joined in the enterprise, though most of the ideas, and most of the work for that matter, were his."
- 1971
UNIX Released
Ritchie and Thompson release the UNIX OS which derieves from Multics.Bell Laboratories Computing Sciences Research group ported Unix to a DEC PDP-11 to support text processing for the Bell Labs Patents Office. - 1973
C language is Introduced
C language was created and was UNIX system was implemented in C. - 1982
IEEE Emanuel Piore Award
Ritchie and Thompson awarded IEEE Emanuel Piore Award for "the creation and development of an operating system of high utility, availability, and instructive value, as embodied in UNIX and its related facilities." - 1983
Recieved ACM A.M. Turing Award with Thompson
Recieved the ACM A.M. Turing Award, generally recognized as the highest distinction in computer science and the "Nobel Prize of computing" for their work in UNIX and general operating system. The Turing Award selection committee wrote:The success of the UNIX system stems from its tasteful selection of a few key ideas and their elegant implementation. The model of the Unix system has led a generation of software designers to new ways of thinking about programming. The genius of the Unix system is its framework, which enables programmers to stand on the work of others.
- 1983
ACM Software System Award
Both Ritchie and Thompson are awarded this for their generic operating systems theory and their UNIX operating system. - 1988
Elected into US National Academy of Engineering
In 1988, Ritchie was elected into the United States National Academy of Engineering. - 1990
Became head of Bell Labs
Ritchie became head of the Bell Labs Computing Techniques Research Department. - 1995
Plan 9 Operating System
In 1995, Ritchie released the Plan 9 operating system. Along with his team, he worked to integrate graphics and forms of networking into the UNIX OS, which is known as Plan 9. - 1996
Inferno Operating System
The Inferno Operating System was a distributed operating system released as free software. Inferno is designed to support applications such as television set-top boxes and advanced telephones. - 2007
Retired from Lucent Technologies'
Ritchie retired as head of Lucent Technologies' System Software Research Department. - Oct 9, 2011
Passed away
Dennis Ritchie passed away in Berkley Height, New Jersey.