Oxford University statistician co-awarded prestigious $1 million Rousseeuw Prize
Professor Brian Ripley, Emeritus Professor of Applied Statistics in the University of Oxford's Department of Statistics, has been named as one of five laureates of the 2026 Rousseeuw Prize for Statistics. This recognises his foundational role in establishing R, ‘the little-known software the entire data world runs on.’
Awarded every two years by the King Baudouin Foundation, the Rousseeuw Prize for Statistics is one of the discipline's leading international honours, recognising major contributions to statistical research and their impact on society. This year's award honours the international R Core Team, which has overseen the development of R since the 1990s. It is now one of the world's most widely used platforms for statistical computing and data analysis.
R is a free, open-source software environment that researchers use to make sense of data: to find patterns, test ideas and turn numbers into evidence. It has become one of the world's most widely used platforms for statistical computing and data analysis, supporting research across medicine, public health, climate science, economics, environmental science and many other fields.
Whether analysing the effectiveness of a new treatment, tracking the spread of an infectious disease or modelling future climate risks, researchers around the world rely on R to turn complex data into robust evidence.
“One of the things I am particularly proud of is the inclusivity of the project. The aim has always been to make state-of-the-art statistical methods available to everyone.”
Professor Ripley said: ‘Statistical computing has for many years been undervalued, so it is gratifying to see it recognised in this way, and especially the appreciation of what has been an altruistic endeavour: making the platform available to all and keeping it available.’
‘None of us had any idea it would reach this far,’ he added. ‘The goal was simply to make better tools available, and we couldn't have predicted how much the world would come to need them.’
R was originally introduced by Dr Ross Ihaka and Professor Robert Gentleman, then Senior Lecturers at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, as an alternative implementation of Bell Labs' 'S' programming language. In the mid-1990s, Professor Ripley joined the R Core Team as a volunteer to develop, maintain and guide Project R as it grew from a small academic initiative into a global research resource.
Originally developed as a free and open-source alternative to commercial statistical software, R has become a global standard for statistical computing and data analysis. It is used across research, healthcare, government, finance, and journalism, supporting applications ranging from clinical trials and disease surveillance to financial risk assessment and public policy.
Today, R is used by organisations including the US Food and Drug Administration, the Bank of England, the BBC, Google and Amazon, as well as universities, research institutes, healthcare providers and news organisations around the world. A key strength is its ability to convert large amounts of data into graphs, making the information more accessible. During the coronavirus pandemic, for instance, R powered the globally followed COVID-19 dashboard from Johns Hopkins University and the Imperial College London models that informed government policy.
A key reason for R's success was a deliberate decision by Professor Ripley and his colleagues to make it freely available, at a time when powerful analytical software often came with expensive licence fees. One experience proved particularly formative. While consulting in Kenya, Professor Ripley became increasingly aware that access to powerful analytical tools should not depend on where someone happened to work or what their institution could afford. That belief in making research tools available to everyone, he said, ‘was central to everything we did.’
This approach has helped broaden access to computing and fostered a global community of contributors, with users able to edit the programming language for their needs. Through the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN), researchers can share new statistical methods and software packages, allowing innovations to be adopted and built upon across disciplines. The foundational R Core Team reference has been cited more than 340,000 times in the scientific literature.
Professor Ripley said: ‘It has been highly rewarding to have taught R to so many postgraduate students over the past thirty years – well over a thousand, including many international students. These have gone on to many different roles within research, industry and public life around the world, from clinical labs, to Google Research and even the BBC’S Head of Statistics.’
The other laureates of the prize are Professor Martin Maechler (ETH Zürich), Professor Kurt Hornik (Vienna University of Economics and Business), Professor Peter Dalgaard (Copenhagen Business School) and Professor Luke Tierney (University of Iowa).
The award ceremony will take place in Leuven, Belgium, on 4 November 2026, under the High Protection of His Majesty the King of Belgium.
Further information about the Rousseeuw Prize for Statistics can be found on the Foundation’s website.
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