Norman Matloff

Norman Saul Matloff (December 16, 1948 – June 12, 2026) was an American computer scientist, statistician and professor at the University of California, Davis. His work included probability, statistics, data security, parallel computing, machine learning, and statistical computing in R. He was the author of books on R, Python, debugging, parallel computing, probability and statistics, and regression and classification.

Early life and education Matloff was born in Los Angeles and grew up in East Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley. His father was an immigrant from Lithuania, and Matloff grew up in a household in which his parents spoke Yiddish to each other. Matloff also described statisticians Thomas S. Ferguson and Olive Jean Dunn as important influences on his later views about statistical significance testing. He wrote several books on statistical computing and programming, including The Art of R Programming, The Art of Debugging with GDB, DDD, and Eclipse, and Parallel Computing for Data Science.

Awards and honors In 2002, Matloff received a UC Davis Distinguished Public Service Award. The UC Davis Academic Senate gives the award annually to recognize distinguished contributions to public service at the world, national, state and community levels. He was survived by his wife, Gamis Yu, and his daughter, Laura Matloff. A memorial service and graveside service were held on July 5, 2026, at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Colma, California, where he was buried.

At the time of his death, Matloff was working on a linear algebra textbook co-authored with his daughter, to be published posthumously.

Selected books