-
Dennis Ritchie was born on September 9th, 1941 in Bronxville, New York.
-
In 1967, Ritchie began to work at Bell Labs, where his father had worked before him. Here, he worked closely with a man named Kenneth Thompson and they began to work on a project called the Unix.
-
In 1968, Ritchie graduated from Harvard University with degrees in Mathematics and Physics. He earned his PhD with a thesis about "Program Structure and Computational Complexity".
-
In 1969, Bell Labs decides to remove themselves from the Multics operating system project that Ritchie and Thompson were working together on. Ritchie aided Thompson in producing this single-memory operating system.
-
On November 3, 1971, Ritchie and Thompson release the UNIX operating system which derived from Multics. The UNIX was a multiuser operating system that was able to function on a variety of platforms and ultimately changed technology forever.
-
Because the UNIX was written in machine language, Ritchie worked endlessly to create a language that simplified the system, as well as make it more accessible to other computers. Thus the "C" Language was created and was implemented into the UNIX system.
-
Ritchie received this award for his work on his paper about his languages and systems regarding the UNIX.
-
In 1982, Ritchie and Thompson are awarded the IEEE Emmanuel Piore Award. "For the creation and development of an operating system of high utility, availability, and instructive value, as embodied in UNIX and its related facilities."
-
Ritchie and Thompson are both awarded the A.M.Turing an award due to the development of their generic operating system theory, specifically the UNIX operating system.
-
Both Ritchie and Thompson are awarded this for their generic operating systems theory and their UNIX operating system.
-
In 1988, Ritchie was elected into the United States National Academy of Engineering.
-
Ritchie is promoted to leader of the Computing Techniques Research Department at Lucent Technologies (previously known as Bell Labs). Here he managed the growth of operating systems and oversaw applications.
-
In 1994, Ritchie is awarded the Computer Pioneer Award for his contribution to the UNIX operating system.
-
In 1995, Ritchie released the Plan 9 operating system. Along with his team, he worked to integrate graphics and forms of networking into the UNIX operating system, which is known as Plan 9.
-
The Inferno Operating System was developed by Dennis Ritchie on behalf of Bell Labs. The operating system was a distributed operating system as free software.
-
Ritchie and Thompson are recognized by current president, Bill Clinton, for their work on the UNIX operating system as well as their work on the "C" programming language.
-
On October 12th in 2011, Dennis Ritchie passes away in Berkeley Heights, NJ.
