I don't think Don ever had a lot of crossover with the more academic world of Unix people, but he's one of my heroes and I have learned a hell of a lot from his works.
Not true at all. If you grew up as EE, in the late 1960s/early 1970s it was hard to not know about him since he was so prolific. FWIW, before I went to CMU, he was already a hero and I had a number of books from the late 1960's. When I was freshman in the early 1970s, his TTL Cookbook was an optional text for the intro to EE course [I already had it but a number of my mates had never seen it before]. His CMOS Cookbox was not published yet, but when it was, I bought it.
Side story, I want to say about 1969/70, after reading one of his articles in Radio-Electronics I sent him a (US snail mail) letter asking him for help in designing an RF interface to a TV. He replied to me but told me such a design would be illegal to make as it would run afoul of FCC rules. I wish I had kept that letter, but he reversed himself a few years later with his TV Typewriter and Son of Video books. My guess is he had been researching the idea for one of the magazines when I contacted him, and must have gotten a ruling from legal counsel about publishing the same. I always wondered what made him change his mind a few years later. Since he seems to publish an email, I think I'll have to write him and ask that way to see if he responds.
Clem