Ian Hugh Witten (4 March 1947 – 5 May 2023) was a computer scientist at the University of Waikato, New Zealand.

[8] He graduated from the University of Cambridge with a BA and MA (First Class Honours) in mathematics in 1969 and a Master of Science degree in mathematics and computer science from the University of Calgary, where he was a Commonwealth Scholar, in 1970.

[10] In 1971, Witten married Pamela Foden at the Chapel of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.

Witten was a co-creator of the Sequitur algorithm[12] and conceived and obtained funding for the development of the original WEKA software package for data mining.

[18] Witten retired from the University of Waikato in 2014, and was accorded the title of professor emeritus.