Dennis M. Ritchie, the creator of creator of the C programming language and co-developer of the Unix operating system has died at the age of 70 on 8 October leaving a strong legacy of digital creations.

Bill Ritchie, his brother, said that he was in bad health in recent years following treatment for prostate cancer and heart disease. Mr. Ritchie, while working with Bell Labs made significant contributions to the field of computer science. He was the lead designer of the C programming language and was a co-developer of the Unix operating system along with his colleague, Ken Thompson.

The C programming is widely used in computing and other programmes like C++ and Java have been developed on the basis of the original concept involving words, numbers and punctuation. The Unix operating system is also noted as a significant creation in the field and its free and open-source version, Linux is used in several servers and computing systems around the world.

“The tools that Dennis built — and their direct descendants — run pretty much everything today,” said Brian Kernighan.