George Dantzig

Born in Portland, Oregon, George Bernard Dantzig was named after George Bernard Shaw, the Irish writer.[3][4] He was born to Jewish parents; his father, Tobias Dantzig, was a mathematician and linguist, and his mother, Anja Dantzig (née Ourisson), was a Russian-born linguist of French-Lithuanian origin. Dantzig's parents met during their study at the University of Paris, where Tobias studied mathematics under Henri Poincaré, after whom Dantzig's brother was named.[4] The Dantzigs immigrated to the United States, where they settled in Portland, Oregon.

Early in the 1920s the Dantzig family moved from Baltimore to Washington, D.C. His mother became a linguist at the Library of Congress, and his father became a math tutor at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Dantzig attended Powell Junior High School and Central High School. By the time he reached high school, he was already fascinated by geometry, and this interest was further nurtured by his father, challenging him with complicated problems, particularly in projective geometry.[2][4]

George Dantzig received his B.S. from University of Maryland in 1936 in mathematics and physics. He earned his master's degree in mathematics from the University of Michigan in 1937. After working as a junior statistician at the Bureau of Labor Statistics from 1937 to 1939,[5] he enrolled in the doctoral program in mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied statistics under Jerzy Neyman.

In 1939, a misunderstanding brought about surprising results. Near the beginning of a class, Professor Neyman wrote two problems on the blackboard. Dantzig arrived late and assumed that they were a homework assignment. According to Dantzig, they "seemed to be a little harder than usual", but a few days later he handed in completed solutions for both problems, still believing that they were an assignment that was overdue.[4][6] Six weeks later, an excited Neyman eagerly told him that the "homework" problems he had solved were two of the most famous unsolved problems in statistics.[2][4] He had prepared one of Dantzig's solutions for publication in a mathematical journal.[7] This story began to spread and was used as a motivational lesson demonstrating the power of positive thinking. Over time, some facts were altered, but the basic story persisted in the form of an urban legend and as an introductory scene in the movie Good Will Hunting.[6]

Dantzig recalled in a 1986 interview in the College Mathematics Journal, "A year later, when I began to worry about a thesis topic, Neyman just shrugged and told me to wrap the two problems in a binder and he would accept them as my thesis."[8]

Years later, another researcher, Abraham Wald, was preparing to publish a paper where he had arrived at a conclusion for the second problem when he learned of Dantzig's earlier solution. When Dantzig suggested publishing jointly, Wald simply added Dantzig's name as co-author.[4][8][9]

With the outbreak of World War II, Dantzig took a leave of absence from the doctoral program at Berkeley to work as a civilian for the United States Army Air Forces. From 1941 to 1946, he became the head of the combat analysis branch of the Headquarters Statistical Control for the Army Air Forces.[2] In 1946, he returned to Berkeley to complete the requirements of his program and received his PhD that year.[3] Although he had a faculty offer from Berkeley, he returned to the Air Force as mathematical advisor to the comptroller.[4]

In 1952, Dantzig joined the mathematics division of the RAND Corporation. By 1960, he became a professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering at UC Berkeley, where he founded and directed the Operations Research Center. In 1966, he joined the Stanford faculty as Professor of Operations Research and of Computer Science. A year later, the Program in Operations Research became a full-fledged department. In 1973, he founded the Systems Optimization Laboratory (SOL) there. On a sabbatical leave that year, he managed the Methodology Group at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria. Later, he became the C. A. Criley Professor of Transportation Sciences at Stanford University.[3]

He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Dantzig was the recipient of many honors, including the first John von Neumann Theory Prize in 1974, the National Medal of Science in 1975,[10] and an honorary doctorate from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1976. The Mathematical Programming Society honored Dantzig by creating the George B. Dantzig Prize, bestowed every three years since 1982 on one or two people who have made a significant impact in the field of mathematical programming. He was elected to the 2002 class of Fellows of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences.[11]

Dantzig married Anne S. Shmuner in 1936.[14][15] He died on May 13, 2005, in his home in Stanford, California, of complications from diabetes and cardiovascular disease. He was 90 years old.[2]

On October 18, 1976 President Gerald Ford presented Dantzig with the President's National Medal of Science. The award was given "For inventing linear programming and discovering methods that led to wide-scale scientific and technical applications to important problems in logistics, scheduling, and network optimization, and to the use of computers in making efficient use of the mathematical theory."[16]

Books by George Dantzig:

• 1953. Notes on linear programming. RAND Corporation.
• 1956. Linear inequalities and related systems. With others. Edited by H.W. Kuhn and A.W. Tucker. Princeton University Press.
• 1963. Linear programming and extensions. Princeton University Press and the RAND Corporation. pdf from RAND
• 1966. On the continuity of the minimum set of a continuous function. With Jon H. Folkman and Norman Shapiro.
• 1968. Mathematics of the decision sciences. With Arthur F. Veinott, Jr. Summer Seminar on Applied Mathematics 5th : 1967 : Stanford University. American Mathematical Society.
• 1969. Lectures in differential equations. A. K. Aziz, general editor. Contributors: George B. Dantzig and others.
• 1970. Natural gas transmission system optimization. With others.
• 1973. Compact city; a plan for a liveable urban environment. With Thomas L. Saaty.
• 1974. Studies in optimization. Edited with B.C. Eaves. Mathematical Association of America.
• 1985. Mathematical programming : essays in honor of George B. Dantzig. Edited by R.W. Cottle. Mathematical Programming Society.
• 1997. Linear programming 1: Introduction. G.B.D. and Mukund N. Thapa. Springer-Verlag.
• 2003. Linear programming 2: Theory and Extensions. G.B.D. and Mukund N. Thapa. Springer-Verlag.
• 2003. The Basic George B. Dantzig. Edited by Richard W. Cottle. Stanford Business Books, Stanford University Press, Stanford, California.[17]

Book chapters:

• Dantzig, George B. (1960), "General convex objective forms", in Arrow, Kenneth J.; Karlin, Samuel; Suppes, Patrick (eds.), Mathematical models in the social sciences, 1959: Proceedings of the first Stanford symposium, Stanford mathematical studies in the social sciences, IV, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, pp. 151–158, ISBN 9780804700214.

Articles, a selection:

• Dantzig, George B. (June 1940). "On the Non-Existence of Tests of 'Student's' Hypothesis Having Power Functions Independent of σ". The Annals of Mathematical Statistics. 11 (2): 186–92. doi:10.1214/aoms/1177731912. JSTOR 2235875.
• Wood, Marshall K.; Dantzig, George B. (1949). "Programming of Interdependent Activities: I General Discussion". Econometrica. 17 (3/4): 193–9. doi:10.2307/1905522. JSTOR 1905522.
• Dantzig, George B. (1949). "Programming of Interdependent Activities: II Mathematical Model". Econometrica. 17 (3): 200–211. doi:10.2307/1905523. JSTOR 1905523.
• Dantzig, George B. (1955). "Optimal Solution of a Dynamic Leontief Model with Substitution". Econometrica. 23 (3): 295–302. doi:10.2307/1910385. JSTOR 1910385.

• Cottle, Richard; Johnson, Ellis; Wets, Roger (March 2007). "George B. Dantzig (1914–2005)" (PDF). Notices of the American Mathematical Society. 54 (3): 344–62.
• "Professor George Dantzig: Linear Programming Founder Turns 80", SIAM News, November 1994
• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "George Dantzig", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews
• Dantzig, George B. (1990). "The Diet Problem". Interfaces. 20 (4): 43–7. doi:10.1287/inte.20.4.43. JSTOR 25061369.
• Cottle, Richard W. (2005). "George B. Dantzig: a legendary life in mathematical programming". Mathematical Programming. 105 (1): 1–8. doi:10.1007/s10107-005-0674-4. ISSN 0025-5610. S2CID 207054446.

Wikiquote has quotations related to George Dantzig.

• Works by or about George Dantzig in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "George Dantzig", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews
• Tributes to George Dantzig and Leonid Khachiyan
• Obituaries of George Dantzig
• Interview with George B. Dantzig: The Father of Linear Programming – The College Mathematical Journal, 1986 JSTOR 2686279
• INFORMS George Dantzig Memorial Website
• George Dantzig at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
• Biography of George Dantzig from the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)
• An Interview with Nobel Laureate Harry M. Markowitz