Friedrich Leisch

Friedrich "Fritz" Leisch (31 July 1968 – 24 April 2024) was an Austrian statistician known for his pioneering contributions to the R programming language and the field of statistical computing. He was a key figure in the development of the R project and co-founder of the CRAN.

Early life and education Born in Vienna, Austria, Friedrich Leisch completed his education in Technical Mathematics at the Technische Universität Wien (TU Wien). He received his doctorate in 1999 with a thesis titled Ensemble Methods for Neural Clustering and Classification, supervised by Kurt Hornik, and achieved his habilitation in statistics in 2005.

Career Leisch's academic career began at TU Wien, moving to LMU Munich in 2006 as a professor of statistics. He returned to Vienna in 2011 to serve as a full professor at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU), where he led the Institute of Applied Statistics and Computing.

Contributions Leisch was instrumental in the early stages of the R project, joining the R Core Development Team and later serving as the first Secretary General of the R Foundation for Statistical Computing. He developed the Sweave system, integrating R with LaTeX to promote reproducible research. He co-organized several seminal conferences in Vienna, namely the first three "Distributed Statistical Computing (DSC)" conferences (1999, 2001, 2003) as well as the first useR! conference in 2004.

Death Leisch died on 24 April 2024, at the age of 55, following a serious illness. His death was mourned across the statistical community and at BOKU University, which published a tribute expressing their loss.