Inside Story
Time to CelebratePeter Horner, editor
horner@lionhrtpub.com
The logo says we're "celebrating 50 years of operations research," but we're celebrating more than that in this special issue of OR/MS Today. The 50 years refers to the founding of the Operations Research Society of America in May of 1952, along with ORSA's first national meeting and the publication of its first journal later that same year. The logo also celebrates the founding of The Institute of Management Sciences in 1953 and the merger of ORSA and TIMS to create INFORMS in 1995.
The origins of operations research, however, go back centuries. Saul Gass, who compiled an extensive OR timeline in honor of the occasion, traces the roots back to 1654 (see page 31). Gass places "time zero" as 1936, the year the term "operational research" was first used in British military applications.
More than the inevitable passing of time, we're celebrating the people behind the milestones, people like Philip M. Morse, the "Father of Operations Research" in the United States, who served as the first president of ORSA; George Dantzig, the "Father of Linear Programming," who gave the fledgling profession many of the first technical "tools" it needed to survive; and C. West Churchman, the "resident philosopher" of ORSA and TIMS, who gave the profession a conscience.
"When they said optimize, I thought they meant optimize in an ethical sense," Churchman once remarked, recalling the first of many internal (and seemingly eternal) debates within the OR/MS community. Today, at a time when Corporate America has had its once clean-shaven image muddied by widespread boardroom scandal, Churchman's words sound more poignant than ever.
Speaking of prophetic words, in his introduction remarks in Vol. 1, No. 1 of the Journal of the Operations Research Society of America (now known as Operations Research), Morse wrote "there is a considerable need to explain to the general public what operations research is, to make clear how it can be of use in industry, merchandising and government, in addition to the armed services." The OR/MS community has enjoyed many successes over the years, but "explaining to the general public what operations is" isn't one of them.
Throughout its long history, operations research has flown under the public's radar, an ironic footnote considering one of OR's earliest successes involved the effective deployment of radar along the English coast to protect the United Kingdom from German air attack during World War II. Fifty years later, the profession is still wrestling with the "name thing," with no clear-cut answer in sight. Perhaps the 100th anniversary will bring good news on this particular front.
In the meantime, we have plenty of other things to celebrate. INFORMS will hold several events in honor of the 50-year anniversary at the upcoming national meeting in San Jose. In order to get things rolling, we asked some prominent members of the OR/MS community to recall their first "taste" of operations research for this special issue of OR/MS Today. Gene Woolsey, Andy Vazsonyi and Sid Hess provide some of the more choice sound "bites." Enjoy the party.
OR/MS Today copyright © 2002 by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. All rights reserved.
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