PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Martin Maechler

Also known as Martin Mächler

Martin Maechler is a computational statistician and professor emeritus at ETH Zurich who has worked on R since 1995, the open-source language that has become the common language of statistics and data science. He earned a mathematics PhD at ETH Zurich in 1989, joined the R Project in 1995, and became Secretary General of the R Foundation in 2014. His packages Matrix, cluster and robustbase bring sparse matrix classes, cluster analysis and robust statistics to R, and he co-authored the 2015 lme4 paper on mixed-effects models. In 2026, he shared the Rousseeuw Prize for Statistics with four other members of the R Core Team. He is a member of the R Core Team and the maintainer of the Matrix package.

Born
1959
Badges

Years link to their sources.

Timeline

  1. 1989

    PhD at ETH Zurich

    He earns a PhD in mathematics at ETH Zurich in 1989, working on nonparametric regression and curve estimation under Frank Hampel and Hans-Rudolf Künsch. Postdoctoral research follows at the University of Washington's Department of Statistics from August 1989 and at Bell Communications Research in Morristown, New Jersey.

  2. 1995–2004

    Joining R and ESS

    Shortly after its inception, he joins the R Project in 1995, having used its parent language S heavily. Around 1997, he becomes a core developer of Emacs Speaks Statistics (ESS), a GNU Emacs add-on for statistical programming, and in August 2004 he becomes its project leader.

  3. 2014

    R Foundation Secretary General

    In 2014, the R Foundation, the Austria-based non-profit founded in 2003 to oversee the R Project, elects a new board with him as Secretary General. He maintains the Matrix package and many other numerical algorithms.

  4. 2015

    The lme4 mixed-models paper

    In 2015, the Journal of Statistical Software publishes Fitting Linear Mixed-Effects Models Using lme4, which he writes with Douglas Bates, Ben Bolker and Steve Walker. The paper describes the lmer function of the lme4 package for R, and lme4 is one of his highly cited works.

  5. By 2018

    More than 20 R packages

    By 2018, he is a senior scientist in statistics at ETH Zurich, an R Core member and the author of more than 20 R packages, among them Matrix, cluster, robustbase, cobs, VLMC, bitops and copula. His interests include clustering algorithms, robust statistical methods and sparse matrix algorithms.

  6. March 2024

    Emeritus at ETH Zurich

    He becomes emeritus at ETH Zurich in March 2024, after a career at its Seminar for Statistics as senior scientist, lecturer and adjunct professor.

  7. 2026

    A Rousseeuw Prize for R

    In 2026, he is one of five R Core Team members awarded the Rousseeuw Prize for Statistics, together with Brian Ripley, Kurt Hornik, Peter Dalgaard and Luke Tierney. The US$1 million prize honours decades of work on R, which has become the common language of statistics and data science; half of it goes to the five laureates and half to the other R Core Team members.

  8. As of October 2026

    R Core and Matrix maintainer

    He remains a member of the R Core Team and maintains the Matrix package, which provides sparse and dense matrix classes and methods; version 1.7-6 appears on CRAN in July 2026.

Career

  1. Since 2024ETH ZurichSenior Scientist, Professor Emeritus
  2. NowR Core TeamMember
  3. From 2014R FoundationSecretary General
  4. From 1989University of WashingtonPostdoctoral Researcher
  5. Bell Communications ResearchPostdoctoral Researcher

Education

  1. 1989ETH ZurichPhD in mathematics

From the biography.

  1. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes ETH Zurich. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.
  2. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes ETH Zurich. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  3. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes ETH Zurich. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  4. Universities had a net outflow of 2,068 moves in AI careersIncludes ETH Zurich. Our estimates of career flows and median h-index across universities and companies in AI, including the role of joint appointments and earlier academic jobs.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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  1. Martin Maechler - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. ETH :: D-MATH -- SfS :: Prof. em. Dr. Martin Mächler stat.ethz.ch. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. New leadership of the R Foundation | R-bloggers r-bloggers.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Fitting Linear Mixed-Effects Models Using lme4 | Journal of Statistical Software jstatsoft.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. eRum 2018: Keynotes announced! | R-bloggers r-bloggers.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Rousseeuw Prize 2026 Awarded to the R Project - The R Blog blog.r-project.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. The R Project Wins $1 Million Prize for Transforming Computing Worldwide | King Baudouin Foundation kbs-frb.be. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. R: Contributors r-project.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. CRAN: Package Matrix cran.r-project.org. Checked 21 October 2026.