Past Awards
Samuel Karlin has been awarded the ORSA/TIMS John von Neumann Theory Prize for 1987 for his contributions to the theory of games, inventory theory, decision theory, birth-death and diffusion processes, total positivity and the theory of approximations.
Through his sustained research productivity over the past forty years at The California Institute of Technology and at Stanford University, he has contributed richly to the methodology of operations research and management science at a deep and fundamental level. His many books have influenced teaching and research in all areas of operations research and have provided a standard of excellence greatly admired. Over the years, his vitality, scholarship and industry have generated more than fifty research students with spin-off in such diverse areas as reliability theory and queueing theory.
His important contributions to genetics, though peripheral to operations research and management science, attest to the great breadth of his contributions.
As a tribute to this breadth and vitality, we award Samuel Karlin the John von Neumann Theory Prize.