Profiles in operations research. Pioneers and innovators
Collections of articles of miscellaneous specific interest (00B15) History of mathematics in the 20th century (01A60) Biographies, obituaries, personalia, bibliographies (01A70) Schools of mathematics (01A72) History of operations research and mathematical programming (90-03) Proceedings, conferences, collections, etc. pertaining to operations research and mathematical programming (90-06)
Today, Operations Research (OR) is recognized as a modern, decision-aiding science that has proved to be of great value to management, business and industry. In Ssort, OR is the science of decision making. In the late 1930s, this new science was elaborated to solve operational military problems. The task was to make related tactical and strategic recommendations for military applications. It was called operational research in the UK and operations research in the USA. Only in 1939, Kantorovich dealt with some economic problems in the Soviet Union. The book presents 43 profilers in chronological order, beginning with Patrick Blackett (born in 1897) through Ronald Howard (born in 1934). The 43 profiles were written by 40 authors, they give very useful information about the pioneers and their researches. In many cases the authors were students or colleagues of the persons they profiled. The book is alive because of personal pictures and stories. 21 of the profiled individuals studied mathematics, 4 physics, 5 engineering, and 4 economics. The (mathematical) subjects mentioned in the book are linear and nonlinear programming, integer programming, game theory, network flows, Gozinto diagrams, control theory, artificial intelligence, computer engineering. Most of the profiled scientists were born in the UK or the USA. J. v. Neumann, St. Vajda, A. Vazsonyi were born in Hungary, E. Balas in Romania, B. Roy in France, T. L. Saaty in Iraq and L. V. Kantorovich in Russia. It is remarkable that many of the researchers have family roots in East Europe. The articles are written in a lively matter, some biographies are really thrillers (such as that of Egon Balas). The reader will learn about the life and the work of such famous researchers as P. M. Morse, H. W. Kuhn, A. W. Tucker, J. v. Neumann, L. V. Kantorovich, G. B. Dantzig, A. Vazsonyi, J. W. Forester, R. Bellman, D. R. Fulkerson, P. S. Wolfe, R. E. Gomory, A. Blumstein et al. Two tables in the Appendix inform about the profilers' background (data and place of birth, discipline, year of earning the highest academic degree) and of honors and awards. There are references at the end of every chapter. The book is completed by the authors' biographies (24 pages), acronyms (8 pages), name index (13 pages) and a subject index (19 pages). The book is valuable for students and researchers!
- Contributions of Professor William W. Cooper in operations research and management science
- Jean-Pierre Brans: portrait of a fiery soul
- An annotated timeline of operations research. An informal history
- The power of linear programming: some surprising and unexpected LPs
- Mario Volpato: a protagonist of the birth of operational research in Italy
- Preface to the special issue: 60 years following Harry Markowitz's contributions in portfolio theory and operations research
- The life and work of Prof. Dr. Jovan Petrić
- The origins and diffusion of operational research in the UK
- Four good decades of OR in the Canadian Department of National Defence
- What we learned early in the US Air Force about establishing and maintaining operational research groups
- ‘A festering sore’: the issue of professionalism in the history of the Operational Research Society
- Four score years of Saul I. Gass: portrait of an OR professional
- The `invisible science': operational research for the British Armed Forces after 1945
- Abraham Charnes and W. W. Cooper (et al.): A Brief History of a Long Collaboration in Developing Industrial Uses of Linear Programming
- War and Peace: The First 25 Years of or in Great Britain
- Philip M. Morse and the Beginnings
- Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett
- scientific article; zbMATH DE number 2062411 (Why is no real title available?)
- scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1482994 (Why is no real title available?)
- The intellectual journey of Russell Ackoff: from OR apostle to OR apostate
- Remembering Howard Raiffa
- Soft OR and practice: the contribution of the founders of operations research
- The development of military operations research
- Actuaries in History
- Fifty years of operational research in forestry
- Operational Research: Milestones and Highlights of Canadian Contributions
- Model-based vs. agnostic methods for the prediction of time-varying covariance matrices
- If you get to San Diego, let's do lunch or dinner\dots
- Investments: the (almost) century of Markowitz. Harry Markowitz: portfolio selection scholar, simulation creator, and applied investment researcher and consultant extraordinaire
- Perspectives in operations research. Papers in honor of Saul Gass' 80th birthday. Papers partly based on the presentations at the symposium ``Operations research in the 21st Century.
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