Ross Ihaka, born in the small New Zealand town of Waiuku and raised with ties to Ngāti Kahungunu, Rangitāne, and Ngāti Pākehā, never imagined that a programming language he co-created with Canadian Robert Gentleman in the quiet corridors of the University of Auckland would one day be spoken by millions—from Wall Street analysts to epidemiologists tracking global pandemics. Now, three decades after R was first conceived, the global community behind its evolution has been awarded the prestigious $1 million Rousseeuw Prize in Statistics, a landmark recognition likened to a Nobel Prize for the field. The award celebrates not just the founders, but the enduring, collaborative spirit that transformed R from a modest academic project into the lingua franca of modern data science.
At a time when statistical analysis was siloed and proprietary, R emerged as a radical alternative—open, free, and built by a community. Today, it ranks consistently among the top 10 most popular programming languages worldwide, used by researchers, governments, hospitals, and financial institutions across every continent. The Rousseeuw Prize citation underscores its transformative role: "Methodological innovations in modern statistics are typically obtained using R," it states, with thousands of freely available extension packages democratizing access to cutting-edge tools. This shift has turned statistics from a solitary craft into a vibrant, shared enterprise—where code is not hoarded but passed forward, improved, and expanded.
The prize splits its $1 million award with precision: half to five foundational contributors—Brian Ripley, Martin Maechler, Kurt Hornik, Peter Dalgaard, and Luke Tierney—and the remaining $500,000 distributed among a wider circle of core developers. Among them are University of Auckland’s Professor Thomas Lumley, Associate Professor Simon Urbanek, and Associate Professor Paul Murrell, whose sustained contributions have helped maintain and evolve the language’s robustness and accessibility. Though Ihaka and Gentleman, affectionately known as 'R&R,' no longer lead development, both remain listed with the R Core Team, a group of 19 leading statisticians guiding the project’s future.
"The fact that R continues to thrive is a source of pride and satisfaction for me," says Ihaka. "It seems to regularly show up in the top 10 most popular programming languages list. Not bad for something started by a couple of amateurs in the outer provinces." His words capture the quiet humility behind a revolution that has reshaped how the world analyzes data—from climate modeling to vaccine trials. As the award is formally presented by Belgium’s King Baudouin Foundation on November 4, the message is clear: open collaboration, not corporate control, can build tools that serve humanity at scale. And in the unassuming legacy of R, the future of science looks not only more powerful—but more inclusive.