Dennis Ritchie (aka dmr), the creator of the C programming language and codeveloper of the Unix operating system passed away on October 12th at the age of 70, leaving a legacy that casts a very long shadow. By creating C, Ritchie gave birth to the concept of open systems. C was developed so they could port Unix to any computer, and so that programs written on one platform (and the skills used to develop them) could be easily transferred to another. Ritchie died at his home over the weekend(Berkeley Heights, New Jersey). freeing programmers to create their dreams.”

Source: cnet.com