Dennis Ritchie, best known as the creator of the C programming language, died over the weekend. His employer, Bell Labs, confirmed his death with a statement that read, “Dennis was well loved by his colleagues at Bell Labs, and will be greatly missed. He was truly an inspiration to all of us, not just for his many accomplishments, but because of who he was as a friend, an inventor, and a humble and gracious man.”
In addition to creating C, Ritchie received the Turing Award for helping to develop Unix. He also co-authored The C Programming Language, an influential computer science book commonly referred to as “K&R.”