Operations Research 50th Anniversary

<BODY bgcolor="#ffffff" link="cc0000" vlink="cc0000" text="#000000"> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=4 border=0><br>   <table border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0 width=480><tr valign=top> <td width=10><img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 hspace=4 border=0></td> <td width=470> <FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=2><B><I><A HREF="../../ORMS.shtml" TARGET="_top">OR/MS Today</A> - October 2002</I></B></font><BR> <hr size="1"> <img src="cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=4 border=0><br> <font face="times new roman, times"> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=4 border=0><br> <FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=2><B>Operations Research 50th Anniversary</B></FONT><br> <IMG SRC="../barbluehook.gif" WIDTH="468" HEIGHT="4"><br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=8 border=0><br> <IMG SRC="art/50th-logo-Tall.jpg" WIDTH="90" HEIGHT="216" HSPACE="8" VSPACE="0" ALIGN="Left" BORDER="1" ALT=" "><FONT SIZE="+2"><B>A Golden Quest</B></FONT><BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=2 border=0><br> <FONT SIZE="+1"><I>In search of signatures on a very special issue of </I>Operations Research,<I> INFORMS staffers embark on a cross-country, cross-Atlantic adventure</I></FONT><BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> <FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=2><B>By Barry List</B></FONT><br> <hr size="1"> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=12 border=0><br>    On Nov. 17, 1952, John Magee, who would become a leading light at Arthur D. Little, traveled from his Massachusetts home to Washington, D.C., to attend the first conference of the fledgling Operations Research Society of America. In 2002, Magee hosted a visitor from the Washington area bearing a unique reminder of the trip Magee took in the opposite direction 50 years earlier.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> <CENTER><IMG SRC="art/tour.jpg" WIDTH="458" HEIGHT="105" HSPACE="8" VSPACE="0" BORDER="0" ALT=" "><BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=2 border=0><br> <FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=1><B>Autograph session: Richard Nance, Peter Whittle, Harvey Wagner and Shaler Stidham Jr. (left to right) sign copies of Operations Research.</B></font></CENTER><BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=2 border=0><br> INFORMS Publications Services Director Patricia Shaffer  accompanied by 60 copies of a special issue of the journal <I>Operations Research</I>  made the trek from INFORMS headquarters, just north of the nation's capital, to Magee's home and art studio (he paints landscapes) in Concord, Mass., as part of a cross-country, cross-Atlantic autograph tour. The special issue of <I>Operations Research</I> features articles and reminiscences written by Magee and many of his OR pioneering colleagues commemorating the golden anniversary of the founding of ORSA. Magee autographed his article, joining nearly three dozen American and British contributors.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> The history of the special anniversary issue of <I>Operations Research</I> dates back to a 2001 editorial board meeting. Editor-in-Chief Lawrence Wein, following a recommendation by Area Editor Dimitris Bertsimas, contacted Magee, George Dantzig, Nobel Prize winners Kenneth Arrow and Harry Markowitz and many other OR legends, seeking their historical perspectives on the profession. In the end, 34 authors contributed articles, including G.E. Newell, who died before the issue appeared.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> This year, anticipating the journal's publication, INFORMS Executive Director Mark Doherty and the INFORMS administration considered ways of celebrating the anniversary. Doherty and the directors hit on a fitting commemoration: a limited (60 copies) edition of the anniversary journal signed by all of the living contributors. The autographed copies would be bound, and one copy would be returned to each author with his name embossed on the cover as a thank-you gift. The remaining copies would be raffled, auctioned and presented as gifts on special occasions (<A HREF="#sb2">see sidebar</A>).<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> To ensure the safety of the precious cargo, and to honor the leaders of the field, Doherty made a decision that would require a great deal of travel by many people, one he knew in the end would be well remembered. He decided that every one of the authors would receive a personal visit by an INFORMS staffer bearing the journals. This would require logistical planning along the lines of the classic Traveling Salesman Problem (<A HREF="#sb1">see sidebar</A>). Alas, due to personnel constraints, INFORMS was forced to dispatch staff manually, using methods from the pre-OR age.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=12 border=0><br> <FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=3><B>The Expedition Begins</B></FONT><BR> <IMG SRC="../barbluehook.gif" WIDTH="468" HEIGHT="4"><br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=2 border=0><br> As a staffer for the project, I decided to begin the expedition on March 19 close to home with an operations researcher well known for his affability as well as his encyclopedic knowledge of the profession. I drove less than an hour from INFORMS headquarters in Linthicum, Md., to the University of Maryland's flagship campus in College Park to meet Saul Gass. Sitting beside a hotel pool off-campus, we broke open the three boxes of journals and leafed through them to his article on the first linear programming shop. He began signing as he discussed his vision for further celebration at the INFORMS annual meeting in San Jose. Gass is coordinating a set of 50th anniversary workshops and a dinner for ORSA past presidents.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> The three boxes of journals, complete with Gass' inaugural signatures, began their travels in earnest in early April when INFORMS Subdivisions Coordinator Maribeth "Betsy" Stewart combined a planned southern swing to visit INFORMS chapters in Virginia and North Carolina with the autograph project. Her scenic springtime drive brought her first to Blacksburg, Va., where Richard Nance, co-author of a retrospective on simulation, signed the journals. Nance's wife sat in his office with him, looking out the office window at the Veterans Chapel where they were recently married. (Two months later, Nance's co-author, Robert G. Sargent, joined INFORMS for breakfast on a pleasant June morning near the campus of the Syracuse University, where he took advantage of the sleepy summer recess to add his autograph.)<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> <TABLE BORDER="0" CELLSPACING="0" CELLPADDING="6" align=right width=190> <TR ALIGN="Left" VALIGN="Top"> <TD><IMG SRC="art/Tour_Px-Pull-Quote.jpg" WIDTH="180" HEIGHT="159" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" BORDER="0" ALT=" "><BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=2 border=0><br> <FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=1><B>Robert Sargent adds his signature to <I>Operations Research.</I></B></font> </TD> </TR> </TABLE> Stewart next called on Harvey Wagner in Chapel Hill, N.C. Well-known for his classic introductory text to OR, Wagner used the occasion to gather with a group of people he rarely meets: graduate students. Wagner has spent his career introducing undergraduates to operations research. Betsy introduced him to UNC student chapter members.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> The Chapel Hill autographing by UNC's Shale Stiller provided an emotional moment. Shiller had recently announced his retirement, and as he began signing copies, he was joined by his graduate students who wanted a photo with their professor as a remembrance.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> Stewart hardly had time to drive the books back to INFORMS headquarters in Maryland before I packed them into a car for the next leg of the journey, this one a northeastern jaunt to Connecticut and New York. My trip to New Haven included a stop with Yale's venerable Martin Shubik, of game theory fame, and Herbert Scarf, author of an overview of inventory theory.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> The drive back south through Westchester County brought me to the quiet lakeside home of Zenos Gazis. The retired IBM executive, who made his mark in OR by exploring traffic theory, is bubbling with ideas of uniting computers, hand-helds, travelers and the highway and mass transit systems to coordinate better travel, not only for individuals, but for entire commuting publics. He talks of building Personal Application-Specific Hyperintelligent Agents, a coinage that led to his founding of Pasha Industries.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> My drive into post-Sept. 11 New York City allowed me to return to Rockefeller Center where I once worked as a bookseller. After passing through newly tightened security, I entered the office of Ralph Gomory, president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, an operations researcher who has made an impact on the way science and technology are communicated.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> From midtown I braved Manhattan traffic to reach the Upper West Side home of Princeton Professor Harold Kuhn. Kuhn was not portrayed in "A Beautiful Mind," but he was arguably the driving force behind the Nobel Prize committee recognizing John Nash.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> Back on the street, I found a parking ticket on my windshield, the first of many auto-related misadventures on our autograph safari. In subsequent journeys with the three treasured boxes of <I>Operations Research,</I> Patricia Shaffer would suffer a collision on her way to Harvard; Mark Doherty would find his rental car suddenly lose power on a California highway; and Betsy Stewart  in England for her daughter's Cambridge graduation  would be thwarted when a Birmingham football victory made it impossible for K. Brian Haley, the author of a history of OR in wartime Britain, to rendezvous with her at the offices of the British OR Society.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> In April, I flew to Austin, Texas, where I had the pleasure of dining with U of T's Charles Holt (who wrote about planning production, inventories and work force) and the indomitable William Cooper (the first president of TIMS who regaled me with tales of his adventures in the Roosevelt Administration and his sharp perceptions about current affairs).<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> Listening to Mozart and watching the cows at pasture, I drove from Austin to Houston where I met Robert Bixby. Bixby, who combines teaching at Rice University and work with ILOG, was sitting in his office, surrounded by rows and rows of Lego sets in a range of shapes and settings. When I lamented that I would have to solve a Traveling Salesman Problem to plan the 50th anniversary route, Bixby reminded me of his expertise, and promised a route planned in milliseconds (<A HREF="#sb1">see box</A>, page 43).<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=12 border=0><br> <FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=3><B>All Roads Lead to Dantzig</B></FONT><BR> <IMG SRC="../barbluehook.gif" WIDTH="468" HEIGHT="4"><br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=2 border=0><br> INFORMS Executive Director Mark Doherty volunteered to make nine stops, covering the length of California in his quest. An easy journey for Doherty would have started in San Diego and ended in Berkeley, but scheduling difficulties prevented a straightforward, south-to-north approach.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> Doherty's first stop brought him to the home of the "Father of the Internet," UCLA's Leonard Kleinrock. From Los Angeles, Doherty drove north to the town of Tehachapi in the Sierra Nevada foothills to garner the signature of Jim Jackson. During a brief stopover, Doherty marveled at the miniature, coal-powered train in Jackson's backyard.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> After driving south to San Diego, Doherty called on Harry Markowitz, whose articles Doherty studied in college. During the visit, Markowitz showed Doherty the von Neumann Prize that Markowitz received from ORSA and TIMS in 1989 for his ground-breaking work in the area of financial economics, work that would later earn Markowitz the Nobel Prize. Markowitz confided that he particularly appreciates the von Neumann Prize because it was conferred by his OR colleagues before the Nobel Prize brought him fame.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> Next, Doherty headed north to visit Wayne Hughes of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterrey and still farther north to Stanford, where he collected the signatures of Ronald Howard, Samuel Karlin and Nobel Laureate Kenneth Arrow. The Stanford journey also brought Doherty to the home of George Dantzig, the "Father of Linear Programming" and perhaps the most revered man in all of operations research. Dantzig's wit, which is as legendary as his research, was in fine form during the brief visit.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> The California tour ended in Berkeley near the office of Stuart Dreyfus, who showed grace under fire by signing his article in a cramped rental car. The elevator in Dreyfus' building was out of order, making it impossible for Doherty to cart the journals up to the office.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=12 border=0><br> <FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=3><B>New England, Old England</B></FONT><BR> <IMG SRC="../barbluehook.gif" WIDTH="468" HEIGHT="4"><br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=2 border=0><br> One of the most delightful moments in the adventure brought together the Boston area's elite contributors on May 5 at The Harvest, a beloved restaurant in Harvard Square. In a meeting of distinguished minds, Harvard's Howard Raiffa and William Hogan joined MIT's Dick Larson and John Little on a night when several heavenly bodies also aligned. In fact, Little advised the group that he would be departing early to view an astronomical alignment of the planets in the sky. The conversation, enlivened by INFORMS' Pat Shaffer, Candita Gerzewitz and Terry Cryan, diverted Little from his celestial appointment.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> The following day, Magee welcomed Shaffer to Concord, Mass., for his journal signing.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> From New England, the journals headed to (old) England along with Betsy Stewart for a meeting in Cambridge with Peter Whittle. Whittle shared his reflections on his native New Zealand as well as his work on applied probability in Great Britain. Brian Haley, thwarted by soccer fans, belatedly signed his copies on the only occasion when the journals were autographed out of INFORMS' hands. (The OR Society made sure the signed volumes were returned safely.)<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> Once the signed journals were back in the United States, INFORMS staffers took advantage of the headquarters' proximity to Washington to not only secure the autograph of northern Virginia's Glenn Kent and Baltimore's Charles Flagle, but also to catch Seth Bonder on a trip to the Defense Department. Al Blumstein of Carnegie Mellon also affixed his signature while in D.C. on business, completing the list of authors.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> With all of the contributing authors' signatures in place, Editor-in-Chief Wein added his autograph to the limited edition when he returned from a sabbatical in New Zealand to a start a new post at Stanford.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> The quest was now complete. Operations researchers, whose inventions are rarely tangible or visible in the manner of engineering marvels, have few physical tributes to their accomplishments since the field was born on the eve of World War II. As INFORMS shares copies of the bound, autographed 50th anniversary journals and archives copies for posterity, not only will the works of the great operations researchers live on; a rare souvenir of greatness will also exist within thumbing distance in the society's display.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> <A NAME="sb1"></A> <CENTER><TABLE BORDER="0" CELLSPACING="0" CELLPADDING="1" BGCOLOR="#990000" width=440> <TR ALIGN="Center" VALIGN="Middle"> <TD><IMG SRC="art/shim.gif" VSPACE=1 BORDER=0 HEIGHT=1 WIDTH=1> <TABLE BORDER="0" CELLSPACING="0" CELLPADDING="6" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" width=436> <TR ALIGN="Left" VALIGN="Top"> <TD> <CENTER><font color="#990000" size="3" face="verdana, arial, helvetica"><B>50th Anniversary Autograph Tour as a Traveling Salesman Problem</B></font></CENTER><BR> <font size="2" face="verdana, arial, helvetica"> If only more of life could be boiled down to a math model. The INFORMS 50th anniversary autographing tour required many hours of planning and a crisscrossing of the United States and the United Kingdom to accommodate personal schedules and last minute changes. If Robert E. Bixby and his TSP TeamBill Cook, Vasek Chvatal and David Applegatehad approached the problem as a Traveling Salesman Problem (minus constraints), all would have been optimal. Their total computation time, once they had the coordinates of the cities, was a small fraction of a second.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> Using the longitudes and latitudes for the centers of the cities involved, and taking the great-circle distances, the optimal tour length is 20,437 kilometers. To just get the optimal route they were able to use the Concorde traveling-salesman problem software (see <A HREF="http://www.math.princeton.edu/tsp/index.html" TARGET="_new">http://www.math.princeton.edu/tsp/index.html</A>) unchanged. A sequence of cities that achieves the 20,437 kilometers is:<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> <CENTER> <TABLE BORDER="0" CELLSPACING="0" CELLPADDING="0" width=400> <TR ALIGN="Left" VALIGN="Top"> <TD><font size="2" face="verdana, arial, helvetica">San Diego<BR> Los Angeles<BR> Tehachapi, Calif.<BR> Monterey, Calif.<BR> Stanford, Calif.<BR> Berkeley, Calif. <BR> Ann Arbor, Mich.<BR> Pittsburgh <BR> Syracuse, N.Y.<BR> Cambridge, Great Britain <BR> Birmingham, Great Britain <BR> </TD> <TD><font size="2" face="verdana, arial, helvetica">Cambridge, Mass. <BR> Concord, Mass. <BR> New Haven, Conn. <BR> Katonah, N.Y.<BR> New York <BR> Baltimore <BR> College Park, Md.<BR> Washington, D.C. <BR> Blacksburg, Va. <BR> Houston <BR> Austin, Texas </TD> </TR> </TABLE> </CENTER> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> <CENTER><IMG SRC="art/page-43-figure.jpg" WIDTH="350" HEIGHT="228" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" BORDER="1" ALT=" "></CENTER> </TD> </TR> </TABLE> <IMG SRC="art/shim.gif" VSPACE=1 BORDER=0 HEIGHT=1 WIDTH=1> </TD> </TR> </TABLE> </CENTER> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> <A NAME="sb2"></A> <CENTER><TABLE BORDER="0" CELLSPACING="0" CELLPADDING="1" BGCOLOR="#990000" width=440> <TR ALIGN="Center" VALIGN="Middle"> <TD><IMG SRC="art/shim.gif" VSPACE=1 BORDER=0 HEIGHT=1 WIDTH=1> <TABLE BORDER="0" CELLSPACING="0" CELLPADDING="6" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" width=436> <TR ALIGN="Left" VALIGN="Top"> <TD> <CENTER><font color="#990000" size="3" face="verdana, arial, helvetica"><B>Your Chance for a Limited Edition of Operations Research</B></font></CENTER><BR> <font size="2" face="verdana, arial, helvetica"> The first meeting of the Operations Research Society of America was held on Nov. 17, 1952. Fittingly, Nov. 17, 2002, exactly 50 years later, will be the day that INFORMS raffles five copies of the historic autographed journals during the welcoming session of the INFORMS annual meeting in San Jose. The welcome reception at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday evening for ORSA's 50th Anniversary Celebration will include fun, food, surprises and music by a 17-piece jazz orchestra. You can win, but you have to be there to have a chance.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> From time to time, INFORMS will also present copies of the edition as special gifts.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> INFORMS will also auction copies of the signed anniversary edition, with proceeds going to INFORMS Scholarship Funds and other worthy causes. Details to follow. </TD> </TR> </TABLE> <IMG SRC="art/shim.gif" VSPACE=1 BORDER=0 HEIGHT=1 WIDTH=1> </TD> </TR> </TABLE> </CENTER> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=4 border=0><br> <IMG SRC="../barbluehook.gif" WIDTH="468" HEIGHT="4"><br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=2 border=0><br> <FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=2><I><B>Barry List</B> is the director of Public Relations for INFORMS.</i><BR>  <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=5 border=0><br>  <img src="../barblue.gif" width=468 height=1 border=0 alt=" "><br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=8 border=0><br> <font face="verdana, arial, helvetica" size="1"> <CENTER><script type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"> </script></CENTER><br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=8 border=0><br> <LI> <A HREF="tocfr.html" Target="_top"><I>Table of Contents</I></A><br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=4 border=0><br> <LI> <A HREF="../../ORMS.shtml" TARGET="_top"><I>OR/MS Today</I> Home Page</A><br>  <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=8 border=0><br> <img src="../barblue.gif" width=468 height=1 border=0 alt=" "><br> <b><i>OR/MS Today</i></b> copyright � 2002 by <A HREF="http://www.informs.org/" target="_new">the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences</a>. 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