R is a programming language and software environment for statistical analysis and graphics. It is widely used among statisticians and data scientists. R was created by Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman in the early 1990s and is currently developed by the R Core Team. Key features of R include its use as a programming language, effective data handling and storage, graphical display capabilities, and large collection of statistical and machine learning packages. R is open source, has a large user community, and is often used for statistical analysis, data mining, and creating statistical graphics.