Unix OS and C Programming Language Architect, Dennis Ritchie passed away

Dennis Ritchie, a computer scientist who wrote the popular C programming language and helped develop the Unix operating system, has died. He was 70.

Ritchie died a month after his birthday, according to his biography on a Web page of Alcatel-Lucent's Bell Labs. Ritchie joined Bell Labs in the late 1960s. The company announced his death Thursday but did not give the cause or say when Ritchie died.

Ritchie is best known for his contributions to computer programming and software. The C programming language, which he developed in the early 1970s, is still popular. It has gone through a number of upgrades, and it is commonly used for website development and other computer tasks. The Unix operating software also surged in popularity. It and its offshoots, including the open-source Linux, are widely used today, in corporate servers and even cellphones.

Ritchie was born Sept. 9, 1941, in Bronxville, N.Y. His father, Alistair, was a systems engineer at Bell Labs and his mother, Jean, was a homemaker.

Dennis Ritchie, C Programming Language and Unix Operating System

After studying physics and math at Harvard University, Ritchie joined Bell Labs. Where he developed the semantics, lexical analyzer, parser and compiler set for C Programming Language to write Unix Operatings system, predecessor of today Linux Operating system. Ritchie tells his education inclination toward programming languages:

My undergraduate experience convinced me that I was not smart enough to be a physicist, and that computers were quite neat. My graduate school experience convinced me that I was not smart enough to be an expert in the theory of algorithms and also that I liked procedural languages better than functional ones.

At Bell, Ritchie and colleague Kenneth Thompson worked closely to create Unix. In writing the C language, Ritchie built on Thompson's earlier B language. Their collaborations were intended to simplify operating systems and make the software portable and easy to move from existing hardware to new computers, resulting in the open-source movement of sharing ideas. Ritchie, in an interview told Investors Business Daily in 2003.

I wanted to find out what things a program or operating system could make possible that you couldn't do before.

Bell Labs' emphasis on research provided opportunities for Ritchie and Thompson to develop pioneering innovations. There are features in C that everyone takes for granted now. But when Dennis created them, they were new to the world and they lead us where today computer and mobile operating systems are.

iTechWhiz salutes him, as a Genius Computer Scientist and a Noble Person. his demise is an repairable lose for his family and computer world. May his soul rest in peace!