It's interesting to note that both the inventors of BCPL and C, namely Martin Richards and Dennis Ritchie, have completed PhD thesis in programming languages design about the same time [1][2].

[1]http://prog.vub.ac.be/~tjdhondt/ESL/BCPL_to_Cfront_files/p55...

[2]https://computerhistory.org/blog/discovering-dennis-ritchies...