Who is not familiar with C and Unix? The C programming language is still widely used in the development of applications and computer operating systems today.
The C language also became the basis for and influenced the creation of new modern programming languages after that.
While Unix is an operating system that became the forerunner to the birth of many other operating systems. Unix was adopted and modified so that it gave birth to many new modern operating systems today, such as Linux, Mac OS, Android, BSD and other operating systems which were also developed from Unix.
The C and Unix languages were important innovations for the development of modern computing and became the source for the innovation of new technologies that followed. Two important creations in the field of computers were discovered by two great scientists in the field of computers, one of whom was Dennis Ritchie.
His full name is Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie, he was born on October 12, 1941 in Bronxville, New York. Dennis Ritchie’s father was a scientist at Bell Labs and co-author of The Design of Switching Circuits on theory switching circuit.
The blood of scientists from his father is what flows in a Dennis Ritchie and makes him a great scientist too.
As previously mentioned, Dennis Ritchie is a computer scientist who is known for his innovation in creating the C programming language and Unix operating system, with his partner Ken Thompson.
The man who earned a bachelor’s degree from Harvard in applied physics and mathematics, once created the Multics operating system, an operating system project that eventually had to be discontinued.
After the Multics project was discontinued, Dennis Ritchie and his colleague Ken Thompson tried to realize the ideas of the Multics operating system in a new operating system, which today we know as Unix.
Dennis Ritchie has outstanding achievements in academics, after earning a bachelor’s degree in physics and applied mathematics at Harvard, in 1968 Dennis Ritchie received a doctorate Ph.D. from the same university.
In 1983, together with Ken Thompson, he was awarded the Turing Award, an award for people who have contributed to the field of computer science.
Then in 1990, Ritchie and Ken Thompson also received the IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal from the Institute of Electronical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for their contribution to creating the Unix operating system and the C programming language.
On April 21, 1999, Dennis Ritche was also awarded the National Medal of Technology.
Most recently, in 2011, Dennis Ritchie — along with Ken Thompson — received the Japan Prize for Information and Communications for their services as brains in the development of the Unix operating system.
“Ritchie is probably off the radar. His name is not a name that all the householders know. But if you have a microscope and you can look into a computer, you’ll see how it works everywhere on it.” – Paul E Cerruzi.
With a series of awards and innovations created, Ritchie deserves to be called one of the most influential figures in modern computing.
Even Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux kernel once said, in the references he uses in developing the Linux kernel, he actually “has risen on the shoulders of giants”. And among the giants, Dennis Ritchie is the tallest giant.
This is not without reason, because at first, Linus Torvalds created the Linux kernel by developing it from the Unix operating system created by Dennis Ritchie.
Ritchie breathed his last on October 12, 2011 at the age of 70 at his home in New Jersey, a week after Steve Jobs’ death which occurred on October 5, 2011.
But unfortunately, the news of the death of Dennis Ritchie was barely heard and was covered by the shadow of the shocking news of Steve Jobs’ death that was reported by many international media.
In fact, according to Paul E. Ceruzzi, an expert in computer history, the influence of the two in the development of the technology world is comparable and equally important, ZDNet even published an article entitled “Without Dennis Ritchie, there would be no Steve Jobs” to respond to the incident.
In an interview shortly after Dennis Ritchie’s death, an old friend of Ritchie’s college, Kerninghan, said “The tool Ritchie created – and its direct derivatives – was used and worked well on many of the high-level development projects that followed, including on the iPhone”.
