Creators of the R programming language win major statistics prize
Creators of the R programming language win major statistics prize
Updated at: June 19, 2026 at 08:15 AM
The R Core Team has been awarded the prestigious 2026 Rousseeuw Prize for Statistics, a $1 million honor often compared to the Nobel Prize.
This award recognizes nearly three decades of work in maintaining R, the foundational programming language that revolutionized data science.
Originally created in the early 1990s by Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman at the University of Auckland, R was intended as an open-source alternative to proprietary software.
Since 1997, the R Core Team has stewarded the project, ensuring it remains a free, stable, and reproducible platform.
By utilizing the GNU General Public License, the team fostered a vibrant ecosystem where users have contributed over 23,000 extension packages.
Today, R is considered a global public good, serving as the trusted standard for high-stakes analysis in fields ranging from healthcare to economic policy.
This recognition honors not just a piece of software, but a collective effort that turned isolated statistical work into a collaborative, global community, fundamentally shaping the way we analyze the modern world.
