Dennis Ritchie, the creator of the C programming language and one of the key figures in the development of the Unix operating system, passed away in his home this weekend. He was 70 years old. The news was confirmed Thursday by Jeong Kim, president of Bell Labs, the company Ritchie worked for beginning in 1967. "Dennis was well loved by his colleagues at Bell Labs, and will be greatly missed," wrote Kim. "He was truly an inspiration to all of us, not just for his many accomplishments, but because of who he was as a friend, an inventor, and a humble and gracious man." Ritchie, along with collaborator Ken Thompson, was the recipient of numerous awards over the years. These have included the Turing Award, the IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal, the National Medal of Technology, and earlier this year, the Japan Prize for Information and Communications. Ritchie was the co-author of 1978's The C Programming Language, a guide still widely referenced today.