thewayne | RIP: Dennis Ritchie

Dennis is probably largely unknown outside of the serious computer geeks, he was one of the inventors of the Unix operating system and the creator of the C programming language. He was a heck of a computer scientist and really advanced the industry and his loss will be felt. Mac OS-X, iOS, Android, Linux: all owe him and his friends an unfathomable debt.

http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Dennis-Ritchie-creator-of-C-and-more-has-died-1360480.html

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/10/13/0328230/dennis-ritchie-creator-of-c-programming-language-passed-away

Here's a story about a grad student who cold-called Ritchie in '78 to tell him about a new editor that he'd written.

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/10/dave-winer-dennis-ritchie/