INFORMS Open Forum

Dear colleagues:

On December 26, I received the sad news from Isabelle and Claudine Frank, the daughters of Dr. Marguerite Frank, that she had passed away in Palo Alto on December 11 at the age of 97. Marguerite was a friend and a co-developer of the Frank-Wolfe algorithm for nonlinear optimization problems. She also shared with me a fascination with the Braess Paradox and had even visited me at the Isenberg School of Management, UMass Amherst.  Many of us in transportation and logistics are quite familiar with the Frank-Wolfe algorithm.  I wrote about her and Dr. Ailsa Land, when they celebrated their 93rd birthdays:  https://annanagurney.blogspot.com/2021/03/celebrating-two-amazing-female.html  And, at the INFORMS Annual Meeting in Seattle, I included a photo of them both on the first slide of my What Does Our Past Tell Us About Our Future panel presentation (along with photos of Stella Dafermos and Judith B. Liebman). My fellow panelists were Tom Magnanti and Linus Schrage, with Chris Ryan moderating. Link to my presentation: https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/visuals/INFORMS2024-Panel-Nagurney.pdf

I am grateful to Immanuel Bomze, the Editor of the EURO Journal on Computational Optimization, for establishing the annual best paper award in her honor, beginning in 2021; more info here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/euro-journal-on-computational-optimization/vol/10/suppl/C  Marguerite was delighted and very touched to be honored in this way.

Best to everyone,