Scientists working on `R’ win major global award

Scientists working on the revolutionary 'R' programming language invented at the University of Auckland have won a top award intended to be a Nobel Prize for statisticians.

The Rousseeuw Prize in Statistics was awarded for work over three decades to advance the open-source language started in the early 1990s.

The prize money is a Nobel-sized $1 million.

Half of the money goes to five laureates deemed to have contributed the most: Brian Ripley (University of Oxford); Martin Maechler (ETH Zürich); Kurt Hornik (Vienna University of Economics and Business); Peter Dalgaard (Copenhagen Business School); and Luke Tierney (University of Iowa).

The other $500,000 is spread among a bigger group of R Project scientists including University of Auckland statisticians Professor Thomas Lumley, Associate Professor Simon Urbanek and Associate Professor Paul Murrell.

“R is one of the great achievements to come out of this University,” says interim Dean of Science Professor Michael Kingsley. “We are delighted and proud of the recognition for an innovation that changed data science and the hard work that everyone has put in.”

Waiuku-born Ross Ihaka (Ngāti Kahungunu, Rangitāne and Ngāti Pākehā), and Canadian statistician Robert Gentleman invented the statistical computing and graphics language while working in the University’s Department of Statistics in the 1990s. The duo became known as `R&R'.

"This is wonderful recognition for major, long-term contributors to R," says Ihaka. "I couldn't be happier for them."

"The fact that R continues to thrive is a source of pride and satisfaction for me. It seems to regularly show up in the top-ten most popular programming languages list. Not bad for something started by a couple of amateurs in the outer provinces."

Emerging as the common language of statistics and data science, R became a global public good, the award citation says.

Millions of people including researchers, students, hospitals, public health organizations, financial institutions and governments can use the same statistical tools regardless of institutional resources.

“Methodological innovations in modern statistics are typically obtained using R and freely provided as R extension packages, making them accessible to everyone,” the citation says. 

Statistics and data science has changed “from many isolated workers writing long programs into an enthusiastic collaborative community where ideas and code are easily shared and built upon”.

According to the R Project’s website, the R Core Team consists of 19 people including Urbanek, Lumley, Murrell and the five laureates. Ihaka, now in "semi-retirement", and Gentleman, of the Center for Computational Biomedicine at Harvard Medical School, remain listed as members.

Professor Peter Rousseeuw, a pioneering Belgian statistician, wants the Rousseeuw Prize to elevate statisticians in the way Nobel Prizes recognise other disciplines. The prize will be awarded by Belgium’s King Baudouin Foundation at a ceremony on 4 November.