Frederick W. Lanchester Prize
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2022 Winner(s)
- Daniel Russo, Stanford University
- Benjamin Van Roy, Stanford University
These papers have made fundamental contributions to the area of online statistical learning and optimization, providing a unifying view of a broad set of these problems. The work has changed the way the entire field conceptualizes foundational approaches to the acquisition and exploitation of information, and it has opened up new avenues for both theoretical and applied work.

2022 Winner(s)
- Yurii Nesterov, CORE/UCL
The book has arguably the most comprehensive treatment of algorithmic continuous optimization. By developing both foundational results and recent breakthroughs, its publication has advanced the state of the art in operations research and its extensions in science, engineering, computer science, and machine learning.
Purpose of the Award
2023 Committee Co-Chairs
Noah Gans
University of Pennsylvania
Itai Gurvich
Northwestern University
e-mail: awards@informs.org
The Lanchester prize is awarded for the best contribution to operations research and the management sciences published in English in the past five years (i.e. 2018 or more recent). For a group of publications, at least one publication of the group must have been published during that same five-year period. The prize includes a commemorative medallion and a U.S. $5,000 cash award. The award is given each year at the fall INFORMS Annual Meeting.
Application Process
To be eligible for the Lanchester Prize, a paper, a book, or a group of books or papers must meet the following requirements:
- It must be on an operations research/management science subject.
- It must have been published in in the past five years (i.e. 2018 or more recent). For a group of publications, at least one publication of the group must have been published during that same five-year period.
- It must be written in the English language, and
- It must have appeared in the open literature.
The submission deadline will be July 5, 2023 (extended from June 15). The award will be presented at the 2023 Annual INFORMS Meeting.
About the Award/Namesake
In 1896 Lanchester and his brother built the first petrol car in England. Lanchester redesigned and re-built the engine the next year into a two cylinder horizontally opposed version using his new wick carburetor design to improve both performance and speed. His true interest remained mechanical flight, which he had been studying since the early 1890s. He developed a model for the vortices that occur behind wings during flight, which included the first full description of lift and drag. During World War I he was particularly interested in predicting the outcome of aerial battles. In 1916 he published Aviation in Warfare: The Dawn of the Fourth Arm, which included a description of a series of differential equations that are today known as Lanchester's Power Laws...