OR/MS Today - June 1999 - Issues in Education

June 1999

Rockafellar Receives von Neumann Theory Prize

The 1999 John von Neumann Theory Prize was awarded to R. Tyrrell Rockafellar for his fundamental contributions to the theoretical foundations of optimization, including convex optimization, nonsmooth analysis and stochastic programming.

The award, sponsored by INFORMS, honors a scholar who has made outstanding contributions to the theory of operations research and management science.

Prize Committee Chairman Fred Hillier, who made the presentation at the INFORMS meeting in Cincinnati, cited Rockafellar for his "fundamental contributions (that) began as far back as 1963 when Rockafellar completed his landmark Ph.D. dissertation, 'Convex Functions and Dual Extremum Problems,' at Harvard University."

The citation continued: "Rockafellar then further developed this work into a book published in 1970, 'Convex Analysis,' which has since been the standard reference on the subject. A particularly notable feature of this work was the origination of the perturbational duality theory that has become the fundamental tool of convex optimization. Applications of convex optimization now abound across the spectrum of our field.

"More recently, Rockafellar has made equally fundamental contributions to nonsmooth analysis and to stochastic programming. Using the notions of epiand protoderivatives, he has created a systematic calculus for dealing with convex nondifferentiable functions. Together with Roger Wets, he also has introduced epiconvergence as a systematic device for modeling and analyzing the way optimization problems change. He has been using this methodology to extend and reshape the theory of differentiation for set-valued functions. His fairly recent work on scenario analysis, stochastic duality and epiconvergence (some of it joint with Wets) promises to be an innovation of great future significance."

Hillier noted that Rockafellar has authored approximately 170 papers and six books, and has been active in an editorial capacity with many journals, including Mathematics of Operations Research.

One of the most decorated members of the OR/MS profession, Rockafellar has been awarded the Dantzig Prize and the Lanchester Prize (with Wets) for their book, "Variational Analysis."

Mark Hillier, son of the committee chairman and a colleague of Rockafellar's at the University of Washington, accepted the prize on behalf of Rockafellar. In remarks delivered by Mark Hillier, Rockafellar described the von Neumann prize as a "great honor" and "the top achievement of my career."

Rockafellar wrote that the award was especially fulfilling because he has long admired John von Neumann and what he stood for, particularly his "enthusiasm for exploring new worlds of mathematical modeling."

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