Unix Developer Dennis Ritchie Dies at Age 70

Unix Developer, Dennis Ritchie

Dennis Ritchie who invented the C programming language and co-developed the Unix operating system, has died at the age of 70.

The New York Times reports that Ritchie was found dead on Wednesday at his home in Berkeley Heights, N.J. Ritchie had been battling prostate cancer and treated for heart disease.

While working at Bell Labs in the 1960s and early ’70s, Ritchie was the principal designer of C and was the co-developer of the Unix operating system. C, renowned for its clear, simple language, would become a vital tool in website development, while Unix is the foundation for computer operating systems such as Apples iOS. “The tools that Dennis built — and their direct descendants — run pretty much everything today,” Brian Kerhighan, Ritchie’s colleague at Bell Labs, told the Times.

News of Ritchie’s death comes just days after the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. Ritchie was not as well known, but if you had a microscope and could look in a computer, you’d see his work everywhere inside. Successors like C++ and Java build on the ideas, rules and grammar that Mr. Ritchie designed.

Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie was born on Sept. 9, 1941, in Bronxville, N.Y. His father, Alistair, was an engineer at Bell Labs, and his mother, Jean McGee Ritchie, was a homemaker. Ritchie grew up and attended high school in Summit, N.J. He then went to Harvard, where he majored in applied mathematics, and earned his Ph.D.
While a graduate student at Harvard, Mr. Ritchie worked at the computer center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and became more interested in computing than math.
Mr. Ritchie joined Bell Labs in 1967, and began collaborating with Mr. Thompson on both Unix and the C programming language. He retired from Bell Labs in 2007.
Ritchie is survived by two brothers and a sister.