COMPUTER SCIENTIST

Dennis Ritchie

1941 - 2011

Photo of Dennis Ritchie

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

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Dennis Ritchie has received more than 3,940,790 page views. His biography is available in 82 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 80 in 2019). Dennis Ritchie is the 6th most popular computer scientist, the 570th most popular biography from United States (up from 643rd in 2019) and the 3rd 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

  • 3.9M

    Page Views (PV)

  • 66.10

    Historical Popularity Index (HPI)

  • 82

    Languages Editions (L)

  • 6.07

    Effective Languages (L*)

  • 5.58

    Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Among COMPUTER SCIENTISTS

Among computer scientists, Dennis Ritchie ranks 6 out of 245. Before him are Alan Turing, Grace Hopper, Tim Berners-Lee, Richard Stallman, and Niklaus Wirth. After him are Edsger W. Dijkstra, Donald Knuth, John McCarthy, Lotfi A. Zadeh, Linus Torvalds, and Andrew S. Tanenbaum.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1941, Dennis Ritchie ranks 41. Before him are Nick Nolte, Faye Dunaway, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, Paul Simon, Nathalie Delon, and Frank Farian. After him are Michael D. Higgins, Ali Hassan al-Majid, Bobby Moore, Gheorghe Zamfir, Wolfgang Petersen, and Art Garfunkel. Among people deceased in 2011, Dennis Ritchie ranks 22. Before him are Ágota Kristóf, Flórián Albert, Rudolf Mössbauer, Ramiz Alia, Simon van der Meer, and Willard Boyle. After him are John Barry, Rosalyn Sussman Yalow, Sidney Lumet, Burhanuddin Rabbani, Jane Russell, and Gary Moore.

Others Born in 1941

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Others Deceased in 2011

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In United States

Among people born in United States, Dennis Ritchie ranks 570 out of 20,380. Before him are Ronald Wayne (1934), Mia Farrow (1945), Leonard Nimoy (1931), Charles Goodyear (1800), Sean Penn (1960), and Eddie Murphy (1961). After him are Steven Tyler (1948), Arthur Compton (1892), John Coltrane (1926), Babe Ruth (1895), Harry Belafonte (1927), and Roy Orbison (1936).

Others born in United States

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Among COMPUTER SCIENTISTS In United States

Among computer scientists born in United States, Dennis Ritchie ranks 3. Before him are Grace Hopper (1906), and Richard Stallman (1953). After him are Donald Knuth (1938), John McCarthy (1927), Andrew S. Tanenbaum (1944), Marvin Minsky (1927), Ivan Sutherland (1938), George Dantzig (1914), Ray Kurzweil (1948), John Backus (1924), and Ken Thompson (1943).

American born Computer Scientists

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