Profiles in Operations Research

This profile of dozens of leading scholars contains detailed biographies of those who have made significant intellectual contributions to the field. It also reviews the ideas of each individual and shows how they aided the development of operations research.

Profiles in Operations Research: Pioneers and Innovators recounts the development of the field of Operations Research (OR), the science of decision making. The book traces the development of OR from its military origins to a mature discipline that is recognized worldwide for its contributions to managerial planning and complex global operations. Over the past six decades, OR analyses have impacted our daily lives: when making an airline or hotel reservation, waiting in line at a bank, getting the correctly blended fuel at the gas station, and ensuring that the book you are holding arrived at its destination on time. OR originated in the late 1930s when British scientists from various disciplines joined Royal Air Force officers to determine the most effective way to employ new radar technology for intercepting enemy aircraft. During World War II, similar applied research groups were formed to study, test, and evaluate military operations on both sides of the Atlantic. Their work resulted in great improvementsOR helped the Allies win the war. The scientific field that emerged from these studies was called operational research in the U.K. and operations research in the U.S. Today, OR provides a broad and powerful science to aid decision making.

Profiles describes the lives and contributions of 43 OR pioneers and innovators and relates how these individuals, with varying backgrounds and diverse interests, were drawn to the nascent field of OR. The profiles also describe how OR techniques and applications expanded considerably beyond the military context to find new domains in business and industry. In addition to their scientific contributions, these profiles capture the life stories of the individualsinterwoven with personal tales, vivid vignettes, family backgrounds, and views of the mission and future of OR. Collectively, the profiles recount the fascinating story of the growth and development of a field enriched by the convergence ofdifferent disciplines.

The Editors: Arjang A. Assad is Dean of the School of Management, University at Buffalo, State University of New York. Saul I. Gass is Professor Emeritus, Department of Decision, Operations & Information Technologies, Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, College Park.

From the Reviews

Profiles In Operations Research: Pioneers and Innovators .
Book Review by Nigel Cummings: U.K. OR Society's e-journal, Inside OR., Sept 2011.

"I can thoroughly recommend this book. I found it both enlighteningand undeniably gripping, so much so in fact, you may find it difficultto put it down once you have commenced reading it.

Arjang A. Assad and Saul I. Gass have created a masterwork whichwill serve to immortalise [stet] the pioneers of O.R. for many years to come."

*For a list of all known typos, plus further discussion on the book, please visit http://profilesinoperationsresearch.com.

The profiles will be organized and selected from different time periods, beginning in 1936 Saul Gass and Arjang Assad are uniquely suited to write an academic history of the field's development, with UMD's access to primary source material on the research developments in the field from its beginning to the present day Saul Gass is a major contributing researcher to the field since its birth in the 1940s Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Contenu
Chapter 1. Patrick Blackett (1897).- Chapter 2. Steven Vajda (1901).- Chapter 3. Philip McCord Morse (1903).- Chapter 4. John von Neumann (1903).- Chapter 5. Charles Frederick Goodeve (1904).- Chapter 6. Albert W. Tucker (1905).- Chapter 7. Jacinto Steinhardt (1906).- Chapter 8. George E. Kimball (1906).- Chapter 9. Ellis A. Johnson (1906).- Chapter 10. Leonid Vital'evich Kantorovich (1912).- Chapter 11. C. West Churchman (1913).- Chapter 12. William W. Cooper (1914).- Chapter 13. George B. Dantzig (1914).- Chapter 14. Herbert A. Simon (1916).- Chapter 15. Andrew Vazsonyi (1916).- Chapter 16. Murray Aaron Geisler (1917).- Chapter 17. Hugh Jordan Miser (1917).- Chapter 18. Abraham Charnes (1917).- Chapter 19. George Kozmetsky (1917). Chapter 20. Jay Wright Forrester (1918).- Chapter 21. Russell Lincoln Ackoff (1919).- Chapter 22. David Bendel Hertz (1919).- Chapter 23. Richard E. Bellman (1920).- Chapter 24. Egon Balas (1922).- Chapter 25. E. Leonard Arnoff (1922).- Chapter 26. Berwyn Hugh Patrick Rivett (1923).- Chapter 27. Howard Raiffa (1924).- Chapter 28. D. Ray Fulkerson (1924).- Chapter 29. Harold W. Kuhn (1925).- Chapter 30. Saul I. Gass (1926).- Chapter 31. Thomas L. Saaty (1926).- Chapter 32. Anthony Stafford Beer (1926).- Chapter 33. John F. Magee (1926).- Chapter 34. Philip Starr Wolfe (1927).- Chapter 35. Harry Markowitz (1927).- Chapter 36. John D. C. Little (1928).- Chapter 37. Evelyn Martin Lansdowne Beale (1928).- Chapter 38. Ralph E. Gomory (1929).- Chapter 39. Alfred Blumstein (1930).- Chapter 40. Harvey M. Wagner (1931).- Chapter 41. Seth Bonder (1932).- Chapter 42. Bernard Roy (1934).- Chapter 43. Ronald A. Howard (1934).