Dennis Ritchie, father of the C programming language as well as a major contributor to UNIX, has passed away. This man was a great man with many accomplishments. Another huge loss for the technology field.
In addition to being the creator of C, Ritchie co-authored "The C Programming Language," commonly referred to as K&R (after the authors, Brian Kernighan and Ritchie) and widely considered the definitive work on C. He also made significant contributions to the development of the Unix operating system, for which he received the Turing Award in 1983 (along with Kenneth Thompson).
President Bill Clinton awarded Ritchie and Thompson the National Medal of Technology in 1999 for their contributions to Unix and C. He won many other national and international awards for his work and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1988 for "development of the C programming language and for co-development of the Unix operating system."