Leland Wilkinson | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1944-11-05)November 5, 1944 |
| Died | December 10, 2021(2021-12-10) (aged 77) Lake Forest, Illinois, U.S. |
| Alma mater | |
| Known for | TheGrammar of Graphics |
| Spouses | |
| Children | 2, includingAmie Wilkinson |
| Relatives | Alec Wilkinson (brother) |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | |
| Thesis | The effect of involvement on similarity and preference structures (1975) |
Leland Wilkinson (November 5, 1944 – December 10, 2021) was an Americanstatistician andcomputer scientist at H2O.ai and adjunct professor of computer science atUniversity of Illinois at Chicago. Wilkinson developed theSYSTAT statistical package in the early 1980s, sold it toSPSS in 1995, and worked at SPSS for 10 years recruiting and managing the visualization team. He left SPSS in 2008 and became executive VP of SYSTAT Software Inc. in Chicago. He then served as the VP of data visualization at Skytree, Inc and VP of statistics atTableau Software before joining H2O.ai. His research focused onscientific visualization andstatistical graphics. In these communities he was well known for his bookThe Grammar of Graphics,[1] which was the foundation for theR packageggplot2.
Wilkinson was born on November 5, 1944, to Kirk C. Wilkinson, an art editor ofWoman's Day magazine.[2][3] He is the brother ofAlec Wilkinson, a writer forThe New Yorker. He graduated from theTrinity-Pawling School inPawling, New York.[3]
Wilkinson received aBachelor of Arts fromHarvard University in 1966,[3] aBachelor of Sacred Theology fromHarvard Divinity School in 1969, and aPh.D. in psychology fromYale University in 1975.[4] His thesis was titledThe effect of involvement on similarity and preference structures.[4]
While attending Yale between 1974 and 1976, he served as an instructor of psychology. He became an assistant professor of psychology atUniversity of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) in 1976 and was promoted to associate professor in 1980. In 1991, he became an adjunct professor of statistics atNorthwestern University. He remained in that role until 2010. He rejoined UIC in 2007 as an adjunct professor of computer science.[4]
Wilkinson was recognized as the primary author of the 1999American Psychological Association's guidelines for statistical methods in psychology journals.[5]
Wilkinson wroteSYSTAT, a statistical software package, in the early 1980s. This program was noted for its comprehensive graphics,[6] including the first software implementation of theheatmap display now widely used among biologists. After his company grew to 50 employees, he sold it toSPSS in 1995. At SPSS, he assembled a team of graphics programmers who developed the nViZn platform[7] that produces the visualizations inSPSS,Clementine, and other analytics products. The nViZn platform was modeled after Wilkinson's 1999 book on statistical graphics,The Grammar of Graphics.[1] This book also served as the foundation for theR packageggplot2,[8] thePython Bokeh package,[9] the R package ggbio,[10] theVega declarative language, and helped shape the Polaris project atStanford University.[11]
Wilkinson served as the vice president of statistics atTableau Software, where he continued to work on scientific visualization and statistical graphics.[12] In 2016, he became a chief scientist at H2O.ai to lead a data visualization push;[13] he remained in that role until his death in 2021.[12]
Wilkinson married Reverend Ruth Elaine VanDemark on June 23, 1967.[3] She died in 2012.[14] Together, they were the parents ofAmie Wilkinson, a professor of mathematics atUniversity of Chicago, and Caroline Wilkinson, a writer.[15] He later married Marilyn Vogel.[16]
Wilkinson died on December 10, 2021, atNorthwestern Lake Forest Hospital, inLake Forest, Illinois.[17]
Wilkinson became a Fellow of theAmerican Statistical Association in 1998 and a Fellow of theAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science in 2009. He was an elected member of theInternational Statistical Institute in 2006.[4] Wilkinson received theNational Institute of Statistical Sciences Distinguished Service Award in 2010.[4]
