Dennis Ritchie father and Co Creator of Unix and C Died of illness at age 70

Just a week after Apple former CEO Steve Jobs death, another important figure of technology and innovation passed away.

The late Dennis Ritchie on the creation of Unix, on which Linux, Android, OS X, iOS and WebOS are all based. Most of the Internet is powered by the direct results of his groundbreaking work. He created the C programming language, which is foundational to just about everything that computes these days. Java, Dalvik, Javascript, Python, Perl … these are all written in C. No reality-distortion field. Just a change-the-world field.

Its inventor, Dennis Ritchie, whose death after a long illness was reported on Wednesday and confirmed on Thursday by Bell Labs, similarly embodied a unique yet admirable approach to systems design: a man with a lifelong focus on making software that satisfied the intellect while freeing programmers to create their dreams.

In a statement, Jeong Kim, president of Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs, said:

“Dennis was well loved by his colleagues at Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs, and will be greatly missed. He was truly an inspiration to all of us, not just for his many accomplishments, but because of who he was as a friend, an inventor, and a humble and gracious man. We would like to express our deepest sympathies to the Ritchie family, and to all who have been touched in some way by Dennis.”

Source: Zdnet