IFORS' Operational Research Hall of Fame

Delbert Ray Fulkerson’s seminal work in network flows, large-scale linear programming, and combinatorial optimization have had an enormous influence on the practice of OR. Ray, as his friends called him, was a mathematician at heart. He loved the elegance and grace of mathematics, and he loved good mathematics for its own sake. Much of his most influential work began with an application, a puzzle, or a specific computational obstacle. Pursuit of the underlying mathematical structures led Ray and his collaborators to profoundly broad methodological innovations, which included cutting planes, column generation, and the foundations of network flow theory. The seeds of branch-and-bound and polyhedral combinatorics can also be found in this work. Awards: Lester R. Ford Award, Mathematical Association of America, for his paper ‘‘Flow Networks and Combinatorial Operations Research’’, 1967; Southern Illinois University Award for Outstanding Professional Achievement, 1972; Visiting Professor: U.C. Berkeley, Stanford University, University of Waterloo. Intl. Trans. in Op. Res. 12 (2005) 367–372 INTERNATIONAL TRANSACTIONS IN OPERATIONAL RESEARCH