John McKinley Chambers (born April 28, 1941) is the creator of theS programming language, and core member of theR programming language project. He was awarded the 1998ACM Software System Award for developing S.^[1][2]

John McKinley Chambers was born on April 28, 1941, inToronto, Ontario.^[3] He received aBachelor of Science from theUniversity of Toronto in 1963. He received aMaster of Arts in 1965 and aPhD degree in 1966, both in statistics, fromHarvard University.^[1][4][5]

Chambers started atBell Laboratories in 1966 as a member of its technical staff.^[1][5] From 1981 to 1983, he was the head of its Advanced Software Department and from 1983 to 1989 he was the head of its Statistics and Data Analysis Research Department.^[1][5] In 1989, he moved back to full-time research and in 1995, he became a distinguished member of the technical staff.^[1][5] In 1997, he was made the firstFellow of Bell Labs and was cited for "pioneering contributions to the field of statistical computing".^[1] He remained a distinguished member of the technical staff and a Fellow until his retirement from Bell Labs in 2005.^[5]

After retiring from Bell Labs, Chambers became a visiting professor at theUniversity of Auckland,University of California, Los Angeles andStanford University.^[5][6] Since 2008, he has been active at Stanford, currently serving as Senior Advisor of itsdata science program and an adjunct professor in Stanford's Department of Statistics.^[5]

Chambers is a Fellow of theAmerican Statistical Association, theAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science and theInstitute of Mathematical Statistics.^[5][4]

Chambers has received the following awards:

• 1998, awarded theACM Software System Award for developing theS programming language. The award was presented on May 15, 1999.^[1]
• 2004, awarded anhonorary Doctor of Mathematics degree from theUniversity of Waterloo^[5]

Following his 1998 ACM Software System Award, Chambers donated his prize money (US$10,000) to the American Statistical Association to endow an award for novel statistical software, theJohn M. Chambers Statistical Software Award.^[7]

• Chambers, John M. (1977).Computational methods for data analysis. New York: Wiley.ISBN 0-471-02772-3.
• Chambers, John M. (1983).Graphical methods for data analysis. Belmont, Calif: Wadsworth International Group.ISBN 0-534-98052-X.
• Chambers, John M. (1984).Compstat lectures: lectures in computational statistics. Heidelberg: Physica.ISBN 3-7051-0006-8.
• Becker, R.A.; Chambers, J.M. (1984).S: An Interactive Environment for Data Analysis and Graphics. Pacific Grove, CA, USA: Wadsworth & Brooks/Cole.ISBN 0-534-03313-X.
• Becker, R.A.; Chambers, J.M. (1985).Extending the S System. Pacific Grove, CA, USA: Wadsworth & Brooks/Cole.ISBN 0-534-05016-6.
• Becker, R.A.; Chambers, J.M.; Wilks, A.R. (1988).The New S Language: A Programming Environment for Data Analysis and Graphics. Pacific Grove, CA, USA: Wadsworth & Brooks/Cole.ISBN 0-534-09192-X.
• Chambers, J.M.; Hastie, T.J. (1991).Statistical Models in S. Pacific Grove, CA, USA: Wadsworth & Brooks/Cole. p. 624.ISBN 0-412-05291-1.
• Chambers, John M. (1998).Programming with data: a guide to the S language. Berlin: Springer.ISBN 0-387-98503-4.
• Chambers, John M. (2008).Software for data analysis programming with R. Berlin: Springer.ISBN 978-0-387-75935-7.
• Chambers, John M. (2016).Extending R. Florida: Chapman and Hall/CRC. p. 382.ISBN 978-1498775717.

• Living people
• 1941 births
• People from Toronto
• University of Toronto alumni
• Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
• Programming language designers
• Scientists at Bell Labs
• Stanford University Department of Statistics faculty
• Fellows of the American Statistical Association
• Fellows of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics
• Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
• R (programming language) people
• Computational statisticians

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