Dennis Ritchie is one of the NetGod?'s. Helped design/write C and the original Unix.
His book, K&R (written with BrianKernighan), is considered the both ultimate introduction and definitive guide to C.
Has a really interesting home page: 
http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/index.html
4 pages link to DennisRitchie:
