In The News

One of the unsung heroes of the internet age passes away

One of the unsung heroes of the internet age passes away

FOR most people who use the internet the name of Dennis Ritchie will mean nothing, but to a great extent the work of the computer scientist, who has passed away aged 70, has helped provide the very heart which keeps the web running.

Mr. Ritchie wrote the C programming language and went on to help develop the Unix operating system.

After studying maths and physics at Harvard he joined the famous Bell Labs in the late 1960s.

It was there that Mr. Ritchie began working closely with Kenneth Thompson, who had written what was known as B language. Mr. Ritchie was to build upon B to produce C.

The pair then went on to use C to build the Unix operating system.

Today, both C [considerably upgraded over the years] and Unix, together with offshoots including Linux, are at the very heart of what keeps the Internet running.

Mr. Ritchie’s contribution to the computer world was recognised when he received the Turing Award in 1983 and the National Medal of Technology in 1998.

Perhaps his contribution was best summed-up by a former colleague Brian Kernighan, who said: “There’s that line from Newton about standing on the shoulders of giants. We’re all standing on Dennis’s shoulders”.

To view and interview with Dennis Ritchie and Kenneth Thompson click here.

 

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