Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie (September 9, 1941 – October 12, 2011), Harvard graduate of Physics and Applied Mathematics, was an American computer scientist.
He collaborated in the design and development of the Multics and Unix operating systems, as well as the development of several programming languages such as C, a subject on which he wrote a famous computer science classic together with Brian Wilson Kernighan: The Language of C programming.
Ritchie is best known for being the creator of the C programming language and co-creator, with Ken Thompson, of the Unix operating system. He also co-authored with Brian Kernighan the manual The C Programming Language, which for years was the language’s de facto standard (known as K&R C), until the advent of ANSI C.
