More than four decades ago, Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson began sketching out the framework of a new computer operating system at Bell Labs.

The pair called the system UNIX. Over the years, their evolving invention grew into the underlying language of personal computers. The simple, but powerful, system eventually became a building block of everything from supercomputers to the internet.

Today, Ritchie and Thompson were named this year’s recipients of the Japan Prize, one of the world’s top science and technology awards. The former colleagues will receive gold medals and split a 50 million yen prize, worth about $600,000.

"I’m really quite astonished and amazed," said Ritchie, 69, of Berkeley Heights.

Ritchie, who also invented the C programing language, spent his entire 40-year career at Bell Labs, now part of Alcatel-Lucent in Murray Hill. He retired in 2007, but still spends time in the lab as an emeritus staff member.

Thompson, 67, left Bell Labs and now works as a "distinguished engineer" at Google in California.

The pair will be feted at a April 20 ceremony in Tokyo. Ritchie said he plans to spend part of his $300,000 windfall flying his three siblings and their spouses to Japan to watch him accept the prize.

Colleagues said the award is a recognition of two important pioneers whose work is still rippling around the world.

"Dennis and Ken changed the way people used, thought and learned about computers and computer science," said Jeong Kim, president of Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs. "The UNIX system and the C programming language have revolutionized computing and communications, making open systems possible."

For Ritchie, who grew up in Summit, the award is the culmination of a lifetime love of computers and their languages. He first became interested in the field after he attended a public lecture on the new world of computing while an undergraduate at Harvard in the 1960s.

He enrolled in an introduction to computing class as a senior and eventually earned a doctorate in computer science from Harvard. He returned to New Jersey to take a job at Bell Labs, where his father worked.

At Bell Labs, Ritchie met Thompson, who had worked on a failed project to write a new operating system. The pair re-imagined the idea and developed UNIX in conjunction with the C programming language.

Bell Labs distributed UNIX and its source code to universities and research institutions for free, increasing its use and helping popularize the concept of "open source" computing.

Ritchie said he and Thompson had no idea UNIX would take off or they would still be receiving prizes for it more than 40 years after its invention.

The Japan Prize began in 1985 to honor outstanding achievements in science and technology.

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