Michael H. Rothkopf

INFORMS President, 2004

Michael Rothkopf was the 10th President of INFORMS. He was Smeal Chaired Professor of Supply Chain and Information Systems at Pennsylvania State University after having been Professor of Management Science and Information Systems at Rutgers University and the Rutgers Center for Operations Research(1989-2007). Prior to that, he spent 24 years in industry at Shell, Xerox PARC, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

 Mike Rothkopf was an applied mathematical modeler who studied and wrote about auctions and bidding since 1965. He was the co-editor of 2 books and the author of 70 refereed articles. He also authored over 50 book chapters and proceedings papers, and 56 research reports.

Rothkopf was involved in many volunteer efforts on behalf of ORSA, TIMS and INFORMS, including being editor-in-chief of Interfaces, associate editor of Operations Research, vice president of publications for TIMS; and chair of the Publications Committees of ORSA and of TIMS.

A Council member of the Business Applications Section of ORSA for six years, Rothkopf was instrumental in merging with CPMS, the Practice Section of INFORMS. From 1991 until 2007, he was a Council member of CPMS, serving as the vice president of the Northern California Chapter in 1975 and as president in 1976. In addition, his responsibilities included serving as a Council Member of ORSA from 1981-84; and serving as Vice President at Large of TIMS from 1992-94.

Rothkopf was a member of the John von Neumann Prize Committee, the Frederick W. Lanchester Prize Committee and the TIMS Distinguished Service Medal Committee. He served as a judge for the Franz Edelman Award (for which he was a finalist in 1980). Rothkopf was awarded the Kimball Medal in 1997.

Rothkopf died in 2007, shortly after joining Pennsylvania State University. To honor his memory, Decision Analysis devoted a special issue (Volume 10, No. 2, March 2010) to articles on auctions. In the issue’s first article, the editors said: “Mike remained a role model to several generations of scholars in showing how both rigor and relevance can and must remain vibrant and useful analytical tools.”

BA (mathematics) Pomona College, 1960; MA (Industrial Management) MIT, 1962; PhD (Operations Research) MIT, 1964

Michael H. Rothkopf's Awards