Dennis Ritchie

Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie (born September 9, 1941) is an American computer scientist notable for his influence on ALTRAN, B, BCPL, C, Multics, and Unix. He received the Turing Award in 1983 and the National Medal of Technology in 1998. Ritchie is currently the head of Lucent Technologies' System Software Research Department.
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Dennis M. Ritchie, co-author of the Unix operating system, inventor of the C programming language and demigod.
See also K&R, Core War, If you want X, you know where to find it.