Dennis Richie

Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie (September 9, 1941 – October 12, 2011), a graduate of Harvard 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 classic of computer science together with Brian Wilson Kernighan: The C programming language.

Received the 1983 Turing Award for his development of generic operating system theory and its implementation in the form of the Unix system. In 1998 he was awarded the National Medal of Technology of the United States of America. He retired in 2007, still then the head of Alcatel-Lucent's systems software research department.

Biography

Born in Bronxville, New York, on September 9, 1941. He earned two degrees in physics and applied mathematics.

In 1967 he started working at Bell Laboratories, where he participated in the teams that developed Multics, BCPL, ALTRAN and the B programming language.

During the 1960s, Ritchie and Ken Thompson worked on the Multics operating system at Bell Laboratories. Thompson then found an old PDP-7 machine and developed his own operating system and application programs from scratch, aided by Ritchie and others. In 1970, Brian Kernighan suggested the name "Unix", a pun on the name "Multics". To complement the assembly language with a system-level programming language, Thompson created B. Later, B was replaced by C, created by Ritchie, who continued to contribute to the development of Unix and C for many years.

During the 1970s, Ritchie collaborated with James Reeds and Robert Morris on a ciphertext-only attack on the US M-209 that could resolve messages of at least 2,000–2,500 letters. Ritchie recounts that, after discussions with the National Security Agency, the authors decided not to publish it, as they were told the principle applied to machines still used by foreign governments.

As part of a restructuring at AT&T in the mid-1990s, Ritchie was transferred to Lucent Technologies. At Lucent he spearheaded efforts to create Plan 9 and Inferno , as well as the Limbo programming language. At Lucent he retired in 2007 as head of the Systems Software Research Department.

C and Unix

Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, creators of Unix

Ritchie is best known for being the creator of the C programming language and co-creator, along with Ken Thompson, of the Unix operating system. He was also the co-author with Brian Kernighan of the manual The C Programming Language, which for years was the de facto standard for the language (known as K&R C ), until the appearance of ANSI C.

These contributions made Ritchie an important pioneer of modern computing. The C language is widely used today in the development of applications and operating systems, and has been a great influence on other more modern languages such as the Java programming language. Unix has also laid the foundation for modern operating systems such as GNU/Linux and Mac OS X, establishing concepts and principles that are widely adopted today.

In a 1999 interview, Ritchie clarified that he viewed the Linux and BSD operating systems as a continuation of the base Unix operating system, and as derivatives of Unix:

I think the Linux phenomenon is quite attractive, because it is based on the basis that Unix provided. Linux seems to be among the healthiest of Unix's direct derivatives, although there are also the various BSD systems, as well as the most official offers from the manufacturers of mainframe workstations and central computers.

In the same interview, he stated that he saw both Unix and Linux as "the continuation of ideas that Ken and I and many others started, many years ago"""

Awards

• NEC C blind award. In 1979, Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson received the NEC C fakeC Award for their contribution in the field of generic operating systems and the development of the UNIX operating system.
• Turing Prize. In 1983, Ritchie and Ken Thompson jointly received the Turing Award for its development of the generic theory of operating systems and specifically for the implementation of the UNIX operating system. The Ritchie conference at the Turing Prize was entitled "Reflections in Software Research".
• IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal. In 1990, both Ritchie and Ken Thompson received the IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal from Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), "by the creation of the UNIX operating system and the C programming language."
• National Medal of Technology. On April 21, 1999, Thompson and Ritchie jointly received President Bill Clinton's 1998 National Medal of Technology for co-inventing the UNIX operating system and the C programming language that together have led to huge advances in computer hardware, software, and network systems, and stimulated the growth of an entire industry, thus enhancing U.S. leadership in the information age.
• Japan Award. In 2011, Dennis Ritchie, along with Ken Thompson, was awarded the Japan Award for Information and Communications for pioneering work on the development of the UNIX operating system.

Nicknames

Dennis Ritchie was often known as "The Pointers" (his email address of his at UAI IT ) in various Usenet newsgroups (such as comp.lang.c) ^{[citation needed ]} . Ritchie is the "R" from K&R or K/R, as the famous book on C.

Death

He died at the age of 70 on the night of Wednesday, October 12, 2011 in the company of his family. His friend Robert Pike was the first to break the news through the Google+ social network.

Legacy

After Ritchie's death, historian Paul E. Ceruzzi stated:

In an interview before his death, his longtime colleague Brian Kernighan said that Ritchie never expected the C to become so relevant. Kernighan told the New York Times that "The tools Dennis built - Y their direct descendants - run just about everything today." Kernighan reminded readers of the importance of C and UNIX in the development of later major projects, such as the iPhone. Other testimonials followed. of his influence.

At his death, one writer compared the relative importance of Steve Jobs and Ritchie, concluding: "Ritchie's work played a key role in the development of the technological revolution of the last forty years - including technology on on which Apple has built its fortune." Another commenter said, "Ritchie also invented and co-invented two key software technologies that make up the DNA of effectively every software product we directly or indirectly use today." It sounds like an exaggeration, but it really is true." Another said, "Many in computer science and related fields know the importance of Ritchie to the growth and development of, well, everything related to computing..."

The Fedora 16 distribution, which was released a month after his death, is dedicated to his memory. FreeBSD 9.0, released on January 12, 2012, was also dedicated to his memory.

Texts by Ritchie

• Programming language C (1978 with Brian Wilson Kernighan).
• Unix Programmer's Manual (1971).
• Dennis Ritchie. «Reflections on Software Research» (in English). Archived from the original on 4 May 2012. Consultation on 12 May 2010., "Reflections on Software Research" Ritchie's reading at the Turing Prize.
• The UNIX time-sharing system, DM Ritchie, K Thompson, Classic operating systems, 195-220 (2001)
• Advanced programming in the UNIX environment, WR Stevens, SA Rago, DM Ritchie, Addison-Wesley (1992, 2008)