Reminiscences of George B. Dantzig
He Made Powerful Ideas Seem Simple
By Thomas L. Magnanti, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
"Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler."
— Albert Einstein
  |
|
| Tom Magnanti (left) spoke on behalf of Dantzig's students at a gala event celebrating GBD's 70th birthday in 1984. |
When considering where to attend graduate school, I waited until the last minute to decide between Berkeley and Stanford. I had heard of George as "the great man of optimization" and wanted to go where he was. That's how he and I arrived at Stanford the same year.
I had the privilege of conducting my Ph.D. thesis with George. I also had the privilege of speaking on behalf of his students at a gala event celebrating his 70th birthday (the accompanying photo was taken at his home at that time), and speaking last fall at a symposium and then serving as the master of ceremonies at a grand dinner in honor of his 90th birthday. Those were memorable occasions, filled with wonderful stories, humor and celebration of his life-long accomplishments.
What do I remember most about George? The course on large-scale systems that he loved so much. His telling me about his feeling of being scooped when Leon Lasdon published a book on this topic in 1971. Working with him on one of his many sidelines, a project called the "Mathematical Programming Language" (my first publication). His wonderful, sly smile and his humanism (he always asked about my handicapped son).
When I was a student, our teaching assistant mistakenly identified me on a seating chart for our class on large-scale systems as Michael Harrison and Mike as me. As a result, George would always refer to me as Mike. When one day I asked why he had confused us, he said because we both had mustaches. From that time on, I was tempted to call him Mike as well.
Those were the days of campus unrest over the Vietnam War, and a bombing on campus had destroyed decades of work of one professor. I asked George if he was worried about the material in his office, and he said he was only worried about his correspondence from John von Neumann. From one great man to another.
As a new assistant professor, I had the opportunity to attend a meeting in town with several senior colleagues, and my wife and I drove George, Saul Gass and Bob Dorfman to dinner in an old car of ours that had poor shock absorbers. At one point, we hit a large pothole (one of Boston's finest) and all of our companions bounced out of their seats, seemingly hitting their heads on the car's ceiling. Later my wife said she was worried that I might have put an end to the field of optimization.
George wasn't the most polished classroom instructor. In fact, his classes were slow paced and filled with many pauses. But what wonderful pauses! I always had the feeling that he was re-deriving the field of mathematical programming before our eyes. His classes were charged with exciting stories about how mathematical programming evolved and about how he had developed theory in the context of solving real problems. I can still hear him talking about the open pit mining and other applied problems. And, he always seemed to make powerful ideas seem simple, drawing on his remarkable intuition. Great lessons for us all — and great teaching — that have guided me as well as others throughout our careers.
When we would meet in recent years, George always asked me if I was still a dean. Can't say he approved. He felt all his students should be spending full time on math programming.
That was George. Unassuming, always thinking, and forever committed to the field that he loved and that he taught so many of us to love as well.
|
OR/MS Today copyright © 2005 by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. All rights reserved.
Lionheart Publishing, Inc.
506 Roswell Rd., Suite 220, Marietta, GA 30060 USA
Phone: 770-431-0867 | Fax: 770-432-6969
E-mail: lpi@lionhrtpub.com
URL: http://www.lionhrtpub.com
Web Site © Copyright 2005 by Lionheart Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.