Who were Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie?

Dennis Ritchie originally designed and implemented the path-breaking C programming language and co-designed the Unix operating system with which development of the language was closely intertwined. Brian Kernighan and he wrote the book "The C Programming Language" that was central to the development and popularization of the C programming language and is still widely read and used today. Because the book was co-authored by the original language designer, and because the first edition of the book served for many years as the de facto standard for the language, the book was regarded by many to be the authoritative reference on C.