Dennis Ritchie was an American computer scientist. He is most known for creating the C programming language.
Dennis Ritchie Net Worth
Dennis Ritchie ’s net worth is around $4 million. He gained prominence for the creation of the C programming language. Also with Ken Thompson, Ritchie co-created the Unix operating system and B programming language.
In 1983, he won the Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery which is the highest honor in computer science. For his outstanding work, he was given the National Medal of Technology by President Bill Clinton.
Personal Life
Dennis Ritchie was born on September 9, 1941, in Bronxville, New York, United States. His father is a Nokia Bell Labs scientist named Alistair E. Ritchie. When Dennis was a young boy, his family relocated to Summit, New Jersey.
He finished his secondary education at Summit High School. He then studied at Harvard University and graduated in 1963, with a bachelor’s degree in physics and in 1968, with a doctorate degree in applied mathematics. His PhD thesis was entitled “Computational Complexity and Program Structure.” However, Dennis never officially received his PhD because he did not submit a copy of his dissertation to the Harvard library which is a requirement for the degree.
He died on October 12, 2011, in his home Berkeley Heights, New Jersey. His health was bad years before his death and he was taking medications for heart disease and prostate cancer.
Professional Career
Dennis Ritchie began working at the Bell Labs Computing Sciences Research Center in 1967, a year prior to completing his doctorate degree.
He worked on the Multics operating system (OS). It is a time-sharing system funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency and developed by researchers at the Bell Labs, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and General Electric Co. In 1969, The parent company of Bell Labs, AT&T, pulled the plug on the project and removed GE computers.
After this, Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson worked together on developing the PDP-7 minicomputer. In just a few months, the two were able to create UNIX, a new OS not linked to any type of computer.
Ritchie helped Thompson in developing the B programming language. In 1971, the C programming language was created by Ritchie, which contributed to the development of Unix over the years. In 1983, the pair received the Turing Award for Unix. In 1990, they were also awarded the IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), for Unix and C programming language. Ritchie also received the Computer Pioneer Award in 1994, Harold Pender Award in 2003, and Japan Prize in 2011.
Dennis Ritchie was also involved with the development of the operating systems called Plan 9 in 1995 and Inferno in 1996, and the programming language Limbo. In the 1990s, he was transferred to Lucent Technologies. He retired in 2007 as the head of the System Software Research Department of the company.
He also had publications – “the Unix Programmer’s Manual” in 1971 and, “The C Programming Language” (Brian W. Kernighan) in 1978.
Dennis Ritchie Relationship Status
There is no available information about Dennis Ritchie’s relationships.
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