It is with great sadness that we share the passing of C. Bernard Barfoot, a member of ORSA for many years. Our thoughts go out to his family and friends.
After graduating from Tulane University in 1955 with a bachelor of science in mathematics, he was commissioned in the U.S. Navy, serving until 1959. He then earned a master of arts in mathematics from the University of Alabama and was awarded membership in Pi Mu Epsilon, the national mathematics honor society.
From 1966 until his retirement in 1999, Mr. Barfoot worked for Center for Naval Analyses (CNA), the Navy's non-profit think tank in Alexandria, where he directed a wide variety of projects for Navy and Marine Corps headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Through CNA's program to provide continuous on-site analytic support, he served on Marine and Navy command staffs in Honolulu, Yokosuka, Japan, and London, England. He also led a team of CNA analysts on a short-term assignment at the 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force in Danang, Vietnam.
Mr. Barfoot was awarded two CNA research grants to prepare presentations of his research to conferences on Cybernetics and Systems Research in Vienna, Austria, and on Model Realism in Bad Honnef, Germany. He also received a CNA fellowship for a year of full-time graduate study at the George Washington University, earning a master of science in operations research. His thesis, Markov Duels, was published in a peer-reviewed journal and received an award from the Washington Operations Research Council.
Mr. Barfoot was a member of the Operations Research Society of America, serving as associate editor of its technical journal, Operations Research, and session chairman at several national and international conferences on operations research. He was author of numerous CNA research reports as well as technical papers published in Operations Research, Naval Logistics Research Quarterly, and in the proceedings of technical conferences. He was a recognized authority on Lanchester and stochastic duel models of combat.
Mr. Barfoot was a native of Gadsden, Alabama. He is survived by his wife of 61 years, Martha Oliver Barfoot of Alexandria, his daughter, the Reverend Canon Dr. Alison L. Barfoot, of Kampala, Uganda, and a sister and niece in Oregon.
To view his full obituary and funeral information, please click here.
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Ashley Kilgore
Manager, Public Relations
INFORMS
Catonsville MD
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