Darwin D. Klingman

Brief Biography

Born in the city of Dickinson, North Dakota, Darwin Dee Klingman was a Franz Edelman laureate and Professor of Management Science and Information Systems at the University of Texas at Austin. He was named Darwin on the belief that a student with an unusual name would be called upon more frequently by teachers and thus learn more. The young Klingman excelled, attending high school in Enumclaw, Washington where he was class president. As a junior at Washington State University, he was awarded a research fellowship by the National Science Foundation to study 17^th and 18^th century mathematicians, discovering some overlooked theories that led to him teaching a graduate seminar the following academic year. Klingman pursued graduate study at Northwestern University prior to receiving an interdisciplinary PhD in business administration, mathematics, and computer science from the University of Texas.

Klingman began teaching courses at Texas in 1969, working his way up to full professorship in 1977 with the university’s Graduate School of Business Administration and the College of Natural Sciences. His research on facility location, transportation problems, and financial planning  was adopted by numerous government agencies and private companies including the Departments of Transportation and Energy, the United States Army and Navy, General Motors, Exxon, and Standard Oil. Klingman co-developed the first efficient methods of solving very large network optimization problems in which tens of thousands of equations and millions of variables could be handled by computer storage devices. These methods found exceptional use in the Treasury Department and the US military.

During 1984 and 1985, Klingman worked with Citgo Petroleum Corporation to investigate (1) a comprehensive combination of mathematical programming, statistics, forecasting, expert systems, artificial intelligence, organizational theory, and cognitive psychology; (2) the support of top management and operational managers; (3) the involvement of diverse business areas to increase individual performance objectives; (4) timely project development; and (5) integration of information systems and management sciences technologies. This comprehensive project, which resulted in nearly seventy million dollars of yearly profit improvement, was awarded the Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Operations Research and the Management Sciences in 1986.

Klingman worked closely with former University of Texas colleague Fred W. Glover. Their goal was to reduce computation time and memory requirement of network optimization algorithms, thereby enabling solutions for the larger, more realistic problems that confront practitioners. The editorial board of Networks created the Glover-Klingman Prize for best paper to appear in that publication in recognition of the duo’s innovative implementation of network optimization algorithms.

In addition to being an Edelman laureate, Klingman received numerous other honors in his lifetime, including the NATO Division of Scientific Affairs Award and the Computer Society Prize. Klingman died of a brain tumor at forty-five years old. A scholarship endowment was established in his honor by the University of Texas Board of Regents in 1991, benefiting students of the McCombs School of Business.

Other Biographies

University of Texas Endowments. Darwin D. Klingman Endowed Scholarship. Accessed August 28, 2018. (link)