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.
Awarded every two years by the King Baudouin Foundation, the Rousseeuw Prize recognises 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 and helped establish it as one of the world's most widely used platforms for statistical computing and data analysis.
The other laureates 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).
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.’
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 and the Bank of England, as well as universities, healthcare providers, and news organisations around the world.
By making advanced statistical and data science tools freely available, R has helped broaden access to statistical computing and fostered a global community of users and contributors. Through the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN), researchers can share new 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 has been a member of the R Core Team since its early years and has played an important role in the development and maintenance of the software, helping to ensure that R remains reliable, widely accessible, and able to evolve alongside the needs of its users.
The Rousseeuw Prize for Statistics recognises innovations that have transformed the understanding and application of data for the benefit of society. Previous recipients have been recognised for work in areas including causal inference in medicine and epidemiology, and methods for controlling false discoveries in large datasets.
An award ceremony for the Rousseeuw Prize recipients will take place in Leuven, Belgium, this November.