John Chambers statistician

John McKinley Chambers, creator of the S programming language and a core contributor to the R programming language, was born in 1934 and earned his Bachelor of Science from the University of Toronto in 1963. He went on to receive a Master of Arts in 1965 and a PhD in statistics from Harvard University in 1966. Chambers began his career at Bell Laboratories in 1966 as a member of its technical staff. By 1981, he had advanced to head the Advanced Software Department, and by 1983, he was leading the Statistics and Data Analysis Research Department. He later returned to full-time research in 1989, becoming a distinguished member of the technical staff in 1995. In 1997, he was named the first Fellow of Bell Labs for his pioneering work in statistical computing. After retiring from Bell Labs in 2005, Chambers became a visiting professor at several universities, including Stanford, where he currently serves as Senior Advisor to its data science program and an adjunct professor in the Department of Statistics. He is also a Fellow of multiple prestigious organizations, including the American Statistical Association and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. Chambers was awarded the ACM Software System Award in 1998 for his development of S and received an honorary Doctor of Mathematics degree from the University of Waterloo in 2004. Following his ACM award, he donated the $10,000 prize to establish the John M. Chambers Statistical Software Award. Chambers has authored numerous influential books on statistical computing, including "S: An ...