Dennis Ritchie who died last week on October 12,2011 was the creator of the C programming language and a key developer of Unix which marks him as someone who had a massive impact on the computing world.
"C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success." was one of his quotes and it's hard not to agree.
By contrast, Steve Job's death a week earlier on October 5th 2012 at the age of 56, received much greater publicity because iPhones, iPods and iPads etc are more directly relevant to modern living. The modern GUI which originated at Xerox Parc came about because of a trip there by him that lead to Lisa (the precursor to Macintoshes), and the Macintosh.
He did an amazing comeback after leaving Apple in 1985, bought what became Pixar and later sold it to Disney and returned to Apple in 1997. He then turned Apple round from being in decline to the massively profitable and successful outfit it is today.
My first job 30 years ago started with programming on an Apple II which he and Steve Wozniak created, and I have an iPhone now. I also program in C so thank you both Steve and Dennis. You changed the world and impacted mine.
I concur with this post!