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Born
Born on September 9th, 1941 in Bronxville NY -
Joined Bell Labs
Ritchie started working at Bell Labs in 1967. Here is where he worked on Multics operating system. -
Doctorate Degree Harvard University
Ritchie earned his bachelor's degree in Physics in 1963, and completed his Doctorate degree in Mathematics in 1968 from Harvard University. -
Bell Labs Drops Multics Project
Bell Labs dropped the Multics operating systems project in 1969. This prompted Ritchie to develop C programming language and, with Thompson, create the UNIX operating system. -
Unix Release
Unix was released on November 3rd, 1971, opening a operating system to work on a variety of platforms with highly adapted quality. -
C Programming Lanuage
Ritchie and Thompson's operating system was not functioning on the more advanced PDP-11 mini computer in 1971. This prompted Ritchie to create C programming lanuage. C programming lanuage is very popular and important to the development of software including programs such as C++ and Java. -
Rewrote UNIX in C
Ritchie and Thompson wrote UNIX using C programming language. This allowed for UNIX to work a wide variety of computers in a range of large and minicomputers and advanced to simple computers. -
A.M Turing Award
Cowinner (with Ken Thompson) of the A.M. Turing Award. It is a prestigious award and the top achievement in Computer Science. They recieved this award for, "their development of generic operating systems theory and specifically for the implementation of the UNIX operating system" (Hosch). -
U.S National Academy of Engineering
Ritchie was elected into the U.S National Academy of Engineering in 1988. -
System Software Research Department Head
Ritchie was appointed the head of the System Software Research Department at Bell Labs in 1990. -
Computer Pioneer Award
Awarded the 1994 Computer Pioneer Award, "In recognition of contribution to the development of Unix" (Dennis). -
Plan 9 Operating System
In 1995 Ritchie (and his team) released Plan 9 operating system. Plan 9 attempted to integrate graphics and networking into a Unix platform. "They kept the Unix choice to mediate access to as many system services as possible through a single big file-hierarchy name space" (Plan 9). -
Inferno Operating System
Ritchie (with team members) released the inferno Operating System in April 1996. Inferno is a operating system for building distributed and networked systems on a large range of platforms and systems. "You can fectch it now as Free Software, on similar terms to Linux orxBSD" (Inferno). -
U.S National Medal of Technology Award
Richie and Thompson are awarded the U.S. National Medal of Technology Award from President Bill Clinton for inventing UNIX and C programming language. -
Death
Died October 12th, 2011 in Berkeley Heights, NJ
