RIP Dennis Ritchie

Less than a week after the death of Apple's Steve Jobs comes the equally upsetting news that Dennis Ritchie, the man who developed the C programming language and influenced the Multics and Unix operating systems, died on October 8. A true trailblazer in coding and computer systems, Ritchie received the Turing Medal in 1983 and the National Medal of Technology 1998. When he retired from Lucent Technology Services in 2007, he was the head of the System Software Research Development office. He was 70 years old.

Ritchie was the son of prominent Bell Labs scientist Alistair E. Ritchie, himself a pioneer of switching circuit theory. Dennis Ritchie was educated at Harvard University where he received degrees in physics and applied mathematics. He later earned his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1968 after working briefly at Bell Labs. His mentor was Patrick C. Fischer

A modest man, Ritchie embodied the spirit of computing with his understanding of the simple systems that make complex machines. He will be missed.

Here are some quotes of his that exhibit his character and his views on life:

1. I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the demigodic party."
2. "Usenet is a strange place.^"
3. "UNIX is very simple, it just needs a genius to understand its simplicity."
4. "C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success.