Pioneer Programmer Shaped the Evolution of Computers

October 14, 2011 at 5:00 am PT

Dennis Ritchie invented C, the computer-programming language that underlies Microsoft Windows, the Unix operating system and much of the other software running on computers around the world.

Mr. Ritchie was a longtime research scientist at Bell Labs, originally AT&T’s research division. Bell Labs announced that he died at age 70 last weekend.

Working there in the late 1960s with another programmer, Ken Thompson, Mr. Ritchie developed C while Mr. Thompson developed the original version of Unix, which is the foundation for the operating software of many mainframe computers, Web servers and Apple Macintoshes. Mr. Ritchie also made contributions to Unix.

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Tagged with: Apple, AT&T, Bell Labs, C-, Dennis Ritchie, Ken Thompson, Microsoft, Stephen Miller, The Wall Street Journal, Unix, Web servers, Windows

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