INFORMS Open Forum

  • 1.  Remembering John Tomlin

    Posted 08-05-2019 14:55

    Remembering John Tomlin

    INFORMS is saddened to share the passing of John Tomlin, an INFORMS Fellow and software developer who made significant contributions to the development of optimization algorithms in mathematical programming.

    Born in England, Tomlin studied at the University of Adelaide in Australia, where he received his PhD in 1968, before accepting a postdoctoral fellowship position at Stanford University.

    Tomlin then joined Scicon, where the software he developed was used for many applications in mathematical programming, and where he also developed the Forrest-Tomlin method for modifying sparse triangular factors. He then returned to Stanford where he worked under George B. Dantzig continuing his software development work, before joining NASA's Ames Research Center and Institute for Advanced Computation, where he worked developing parallel and other advanced computing techniques for O.R. methodologies.

    He then spent nearly a decade with Ketron Inc. developing optimization systems and software before joining IBM's research division, where his work included O.R. applications to the Internet and On-Demand Information Services. His Internet work transferred to his next role with Yahoo! where he developed optimization models for scheduling online advertisements.

    After retiring from Yahoo!, Tomlin formed consulting firm opTomax, worked with FICO, and taught a course on discrete mathematics at Stanford.

    Throughout his career, Tomlin authored numerous papers and filed many patents. He was recognized with several honors in the field of mathematical programming and was elected as a Fellow of INFORMS.

    To learn more about John Tomlin and his incredible contributions, click here.



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    Scharan Johnson
    Director of Membership and Communities
    INFORMS
    Catonsville MD
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