- Person
- George Dantzig
- Lived
- 1914–2005
- Field
- Mathematics, operations research
- From
- American
The story
George Dantzig was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1914 to Jewish parents; his father, Tobias Dantzig, was a mathematician from the Russian Empire who had studied under Henri Poincaré. During the Second World War, George headed the combat analysis branch of the U.S. Army Air Forces’ statistical control headquarters, helping plan the movement of aircraft, crews and supplies. After the war he returned to the Air Force with a task: find a mathematical way to choose the best plan.
In 1947 he formulated the problem now called linear programming. Many practical decisions share a structure: limited resources such as money, fuel, machines or workers; activities that use them in fixed proportions; and a goal, such as the lowest cost or highest output. Written as equations and inequalities, the question becomes precise. Dantzig then invented the simplex method to solve it. The possible plans form a many-sided shape, and the best plan sits at one of its corners; the method moves from corner to corner, always improving, until it reaches the best. His original example, assigning 70 people to 70 jobs, has more possible assignments than could ever be checked one by one, yet the simplex method finds the best one quickly.
Arriving at the same time as the electronic computer, linear programming spread rapidly. The New York Times noted its use in utilities, oil refineries, investments, the steel industry, nutritious low-cost diets and commercial aircraft routes. Airlines use it to schedule crews and fleets, shipping firms to route goods and factories to plan production. When Dantzig died in 2005, his Stanford colleagues reported estimates that 10 to 25 percent of all scientific computation was devoted to the simplex method.
Dantzig explained the method in his 1963 book Linear Programming and Extensions, and in 1976 President Gerald Ford presented him with the National Medal of Science for inventing linear programming.
Why it matters
The simplex method helps businesses and governments use fuel, materials, money and people efficiently, cutting waste and costs in the goods and services everyone relies on.
About George Dantzig
American mathematician who invented the simplex method of linear programming, the tool used everywhere to plan airline schedules, deliveries, factories, power grids and diets at the lowest cost.
Sources
- George Dantzig Wikipedia
- George B. Dantzig obituary (New York Times, 2005) MacTutor History of Mathematics, University of St Andrews
- George Bernard Dantzig IEEE Computer Society
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.