Harvey M. Wagner

Harvey M. Wagner has been awarded ORSA's 1969 Lanchester Prize for his book, Principles of Operations Research.

Wagner, a professor in the Department of Administrative Sciences at Yale University, spent five years writing his 1,086 page book. The book, published by Prentice-Hall, has gained wide acceptance as an introductory text in many business and engineering schools.

The Prize Committee's selection was unanimous on the first ballot. Their citation stated,

• "Outstanding in several of the criteria on which judgment is based, this is a monumental and consistently excellent effort that should contribute much, both now and in the future, to the understanding, exposition and use of operations research's principles as well as its techniques. The committee is pleased to award the prize to this work, and congratulates Professor Wagner on a job well done."

In his acceptance remarks, Wagner pointed out that, in 1964, when he began the book, it was clear that operations research would remain a vital field of activity, contributing lasting values to our social system. Yet, at that time, no book served as a complete up-to-date introduction to the field.

In his opinion, what was needed was a text that would command academic respectability by and for operations research practitioners and theorists. His central goal was to write a book that would concentrate on important fundamentals, influence future managers, and, perhaps, stimulate young scholars to choose operations research as their professional specialty.