History of O.R. Excellence

Honoring the People, Institutions, Methods, and Applications of O.R. that made History

Operations Research has deep roots in the history of mathematics, statistics, economics, industry and the military.  This subsite gives you access to pages from which can learn about more than 240 historic individuals (including Nobel Prize winners, INFORMS prize winners, INFORMS Fellows, and members of National Academies), as well as the historic institutions, methodologies and application areas that are central to the modern history and current activities of the profession. 

The subsite incorporates images, reference citations, and links to online material, including video oral history interviews, archives,  memoirs, selected publications, and bibliographies.  The oral histories created by INFORMS include searchable synchronized transcripts and are divided into chapters. The subsite contains a wealth of resources for both casual and intensive exploration including bibliographies and links to published material.  

The great preponderance of material, including relevant papers in INFORMS publications, is open access.  By special arrangement with Springer, INFORMS members can access chapters from "Profiles in Operations Research: Pioneers and Innovators," edited by Arjang Assad and Saul Gass. 

The subsite has been created and is maintained by the INFORMS History and Traditions Committee, which encourages and facilitates the collection and preservation of materials relating to the history and traditions of OR/MS.  New materials, including several oral history interviews done each year, are added on a continuing basis.  Contact the committee if you would like to contribute material to the various topic pages on institutions, methodologies and application areas (see the "Chemical and Petroleum" application area page and the "University of Texas" academic institution page for examples). 

A guide to the subsite can be found in the August 2017 issue, vol. 44 no. 4, of OR/MS Today, the INFORMS Member Magazine.

Resources in the History of Operations Research

The INFORMS Conference Presentation Database provides information on over 56,000 presentations from INFORMS meetings, starting with meetings held in 2002.

The Annual Comprehensive Index (ACI) Bibliographic Database contains approximately 38,818 journal bibliographic entries covering the years 1976 - 2001. The records for ACI were contributed by IFORS, publisher of International Abstracts in Operations Research (IAOR).

Bernard O. Koopman
Operations Evaluation Group
Office of the Chief of Naval Operations
Navy Department
Washington, D.C. 1946

If you have not visited the INFORMS O.R. History website in recent months, then you're probably noticing some differences. The recent upgrade of the site has much new content that has been added since our last description in the October 2015 issue of OR/MS Today.