COMPUTER SCIENTIST

Dennis Ritchie

1941 - 2011

Photo of Dennis Ritchie

Icon of person Dennis Ritchie

Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie (September 9, 1941 – c. October 12, 2011) was an American computer scientist. He created the C programming language and the Unix operating system and B language with long-time colleague Ken Thompson. Ritchie and Thompson were awarded the Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in 1983, the IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 1990, and the National Medal of Technology from President Bill Clinton in 1999. Read more on Wikipedia

His biography is available in different languages on Wikipedia. Dennis Ritchie is the 8th most popular computer scientist (down from 6th in 2019), the 814th most popular biography from United States (down from 570th in 2019) and the 5th most popular American Computer Scientist.

Dennis Ritchie is most famous for his work on the C programming language and the Unix operating system.

Memorability Metrics

Loading...

Page views of Dennis Ritchie by language

Loading...

Among COMPUTER SCIENTISTS

Among computer scientists, Dennis Ritchie ranks 8 out of 245. Before him are Richard Stallman, Grace Hopper, Satoshi Nakamoto, Tim Berners-Lee, John McCarthy, and Barbara Liskov. After him are Frances E. Allen, Donald Knuth, Edsger W. Dijkstra, Geoffrey Hinton, Niklaus Wirth, and Lotfi A. Zadeh.

Most Popular Computer Scientists in Wikipedia

Go to all Rankings
Load previousLoad previous

Contemporaries

Among people born in 1941, Dennis Ritchie ranks 48. Before him are Jules A. Hoffmann, Michael D. Higgins, Theodor W. Hänsch, Charlie Watts, David Johnston, and Bobby Moore. After him are Wolfgang Petersen, John E. Walker, Paul Simon, Ali Hassan al-Majid, Hank Marvin, and George Clinton. Among people deceased in 2011, Dennis Ritchie ranks 29. Before him are William Lipscomb, Annie Girardot, Flórián Albert, John McCarthy, Ramiz Alia, and Ralph M. Steinman. After him are Gary Moore, Sidney Lumet, Maria Schneider, Necmettin Erbakan, Baruch Samuel Blumberg, and Manfred Gerlach.

Others Born in 1941

Go to all Rankings
Load previousLoad previous

Others Deceased in 2011

Go to all Rankings
Load previousLoad previous

In United States

Among people born in United States, Dennis Ritchie ranks 814 out of 20,380. Before him are Michael J. Smith (1945), George Peppard (1928), Andrew Mellon (1855), Immanuel Wallerstein (1930), Quincy Jones (1933), and William Sadler (1950). After him are Stephen Collins (1947), Walt Whitman Rostow (1916), Robert H. Goddard (1882), Telly Savalas (1922), Clair Cameron Patterson (1922), and Duke Ellington (1899).

Others born in United States

Go to all Rankings
Load previousLoad previous

Among COMPUTER SCIENTISTS In United States

Among computer scientists born in United States, Dennis Ritchie ranks 5. Before him are Richard Stallman (1953), Grace Hopper (1906), John McCarthy (1927), and Barbara Liskov (1939). After him are Frances E. Allen (1932), Donald Knuth (1938), Ray Kurzweil (1948), Marvin Minsky (1927), John Cocke (1925), Don Norman (1935), and Andrew S. Tanenbaum (1944).

American born Computer Scientists

Go to all Rankings
Load previousLoad previous