Laura:
Thank you very much for your interest. The best place for learning about the history of ORMS is the History-of-OR/History and Traditions (H&T) website:
https://www.informs.org/Explore/History-of-O.R.-Excellence
Much of the content of the H&T website is due to the work of Mark Eisner. He gives a nice overview in this article: https://pubsonline.informs.org/do/10.1287/orms.2015.05.13/full/
Will Thomas has helped out with writing some of the history, he has a follow-on article here:
https://pubsonline.informs.org/do/10.1287/orms.2015.03.08/full/
If you want to take a quick look at the H&T website , here is a quick summary of Mark’s article.
Oral/Video histories: I find the video interview with Egon Balas entertaining and informative.
Biographical profiles: Including past presidents of INFORMS. Let me know if updates are appropriate.
Further down the website:
History of institutions:
Case Institute of Technology history is a good example for academic institutions.
RAND history is a good example for non-academic.
Subject Area histories is another interesting section. The one on Optimization/ Math Programming is quite thorough.
What to do with regard to History of ORMS?
- We need new younger members of the H&T committee.
- We need more essays/articles on various areas. For example, perhaps a history of ORMS at U. Wisconsin?
One thing I have noticed is that there are lots of specific histories of ORMS scattered over the web, such as departmental histories. We try to have links to them from the H&T website, but there is the problem of broken links. Departments move these essays around, so the links no longer work.
So, for someone interested in the history of ORMS, it is useful to have these specific histories collected in one place, on the H&T website.
Thanks again for your interest,
Linus
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Linus Schrage
President, Professor
LINDO Systems, Inc.
Chicago IL
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