INFORMS News: In Memoriam — William H. Marlow (1925-2011)
William H. Marlow
William H. Marlow died on April 21 at the age of 86. Dr. Marlow was the founding department chair of the Operations Research Department in the School of Engineering and Applied Science of The George Washington University (GW). He was a member of INFORMS, the Mathematical Association of America and the Military Operations Research Society.
Under Dr. Marlow’s leadership, the O.R. Department at GW developed into a premier department in the 1970s and ’80s, with strong emphases in both mathematical optimization and stochastic processes.
Dr. Marlow was born in Waterloo, Iowa. After service in World War II as a Naval Reserve officer on USS Bivin, he completed his undergraduate studies in mathematics at St. Ambrose College and continued in mathematics at the State University of Iowa, where he received his Ph.D. Although his doctoral research was in topology, after graduation in 1951 he went to the Logistics Research Project (LRP) at GW “to explore uses of mathematics, statistics and modern computing equipment for Naval logistics planning.” The LRP had been founded at GW in 1949.
From 1954-60 Dr. Marlow served as consultant to the National Security Agency. He spent 15 months of 1954-55 in Los Angeles under joint appointment by GW and Numerical Analysis Research, UCLA.
In 1956, Dr. Marlow became director of the LRP, and he led the LRP and its successor logistics organization until 1987, more than 30 years. He was principal investigator on many contracts for determining shipboard inventory lists of repair parts (most notably for the Polaris Weapon System), for designing and scheduling maintenance and repair of ships and aircraft, and for devising transportation schedules to support different kinds of military contingency plans. Throughout 1956-69, the Project’s Computation Laboratory served as a prototype for large Navy data processing installations, most notably in Mechanicsburg, Pa.
In 1969, Dr, Marlow became director of the Institute for Management Science and Engineering at GW, set up “to define and develop new analytical management techniques for keeping pace with expanding technology.” The Institute also provided a multidisciplinary environment for graduate teaching and research, and it included the Program in Logistics, which then replaced the LRP.
In the period 1970-81, Dr. Marlow directed research on problems of training Naval Aviators. Network modeling techniques were used to study flows of students, measurements of utilization, and effects from changes in resources, syllabuses, and other factors.
From 1978-87, Dr. Marlow directed and performed research based on Marine Corps Combat Readiness Evaluation System (MCCRES) data for various training problems of Fleet Marine Force units. Under his watch, a number of alternative measures of readiness were devised and methods were created for forecasting readiness based on simulated combat exercises.
During 1988-91, Dr. Marlow was consultant to the Logistics Management Institute on Strategic Defense System Logistics and worked with the SDI Phase One Engineering Team (POET).
Dr. Marlow was author or co-author of many reports and a number of journal articles, most of which appeared in Naval Research Logistics Quarterly. He edited the 1976 volume “Modern Trends in Logistics Research” (MIT Press). His textbook “Mathematics for Operations Research” was published by Wiley-Interscience in 1978 and was republished in 1993 by Dover.
Dr. Marlow’s academic positions at GW included professorial lecturer in the Department of Mathematics (1959-69), chairman of the Department of Engineering Administration and Operations Research (1970-71) and founding chairman of the Department of Operations Research (1971-77). He retired and became professor emeritus in 1994.
Upon retirement, Dr. Marlow organized and cataloged the many documents, log books, microfilms, etc. associated with the LRP and its successor Program in Logistics that span the period 1950-87. The resulting Logistics Archives resides in the GW University Archives.
Dr. Marlow was devoted to his family and is survived by his wife of 62 years, Delphine, and by five children, 12 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. He will be sorely missed by family, friends and former students and colleagues, including those alumni of the LRP who attend luncheons of the “Old Boys Club” every three months in Arlington, Va.
– Donald Gross and Richard M. Soland
