People, much closer to dmr, in the past have attempted it.[0] The issue it would seem is that there is no record on file at Harvard that he ever defended his thesis. ACM does however have a Doctoral Dissertation award in his name, the irony.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/2626401.2626421

Thanks, looks like people have done well by him

Might be difficult. I couldn't turn up any policy in brief surfing, but the only posthumous degrees I found were non-doctoral, and https://psychology.fas.harvard.edu/people/mary-whiton-calkin... doesn't bode well.

(I'm probably just cynical, but if we took up a large enough collection, I'd bet they'd be willing to grant a degree in lieu of naming a building.)

There's nothing preventing award of degrees after death, if the thesis has been defended, other than administrivia. It's not the Nobel prize.

I like this idea. So I took a look at their policies and it seems the official Harvard thesis printer (https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/student-handbook/dissertation-g...) is Acme, which has an individual-oriented website: https://www.thesisondemand.com/ Using their calculator, a single 181pg\* BW printed thesis is ~$45. That seems cheap enough for a joke for me! But it looks like one will need to add some additional metadata to follow the dissertation guidelines...

If anyone wants to discuss this further, email me.

\* The first copy of the thesis linked in OP is 179 pages but it's very dirty and would need to be printed in color; the second copy, https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/20... , is in much better shape and can be printed in BW.

After reading tankenmate's link, it seems this has already been tried & would be pointless; the library would just reject it. Oh well!

Policy or not, it would perhaps be nice to deposit a copy anyway. Put the ball in their court so to speak, even if Harvard does nothing further.

I'll never understand why people care so much about posthumous recognition. The man is dead and anything you do now is only going to make you feel better. In any case, Ritchie was regarded as one of the most accomplished men in computing during his life. That's far greater recognition than your average PhD.