| Dennis M. Ritchie | Born in Bronxville, New York, Ritchie graduated from Harvard with degrees in physics and applied mathematics. In 1967, he began working at the Bell Labs' Computing Sciences Research Center; he is currently the head of Lucent Technologies' System Software Research Department. In 1983, he and Ken Thompson jointly received the Turing award "for their development of generic operating systems theory and specifically for the implementation of the UNIX operating system."
When asked what influenced him in developing C in the manner he did, Ritchie has been quoted to have said that it "looked like a good thing to do", and that anyone else in the same place at the same time would have done the same thing. |
