Ross Ihaka

George Ross Ihaka (born 1954^[2]) is a Māori New Zealander statistician who was an associate professor of statistics at the University of Auckland until his retirement in 2017.^[3] Alongside Robert Gentleman, he is one of the creators of the R programming language.^[4][5][6] In 2008, Ihaka received the Pickering Medal, awarded by the Royal Society of New Zealand, for his work on R.^[7]

Ross Ihaka
Ihaka at the 2010 New Zealand Open Source Awards
Born	George Ross Ihaka 1954 (age 70–71) Waiuku, New Zealand
Alma mater	University of Auckland University of California, Berkeley (PhD)
Known for	R programming language
Awards	Pickering Medal (2008)
Scientific career
Fields	Statistical computing
Institutions	University of Auckland
Thesis	Rūaumoko (1985)
Doctoral advisor	David R. Brillinger[1]
Website	www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~ihaka/

Education

Ihaka completed his undergraduate education at the University of Auckland, and obtained his PhD in 1985 from the University of California, Berkeley supervised by David R. Brillinger.^[1] His thesis was on statistical modelling for seismic interferometry and was titled Rūaumoko, after the god of earthquakes, volcanoes and seasons in Māori mythology.^[1][8][9]

Career and research

As of 2010, he was working on a new statistical programming language based on Lisp.^[10][11] The Department of Statistics at the University of Auckland started a public lecture series in his honour in 2017.^[12]

Personal life

Ihaka is of Ngāti Kahungunu, Rangitāne and Ngati Pākehā (New Zealand European) descent.^[6][13]