| Spring 2005 UMASS
Amherst Operations Research / Management Science Seminar Series |
Date: Friday, April 15, 2005 Time: 11:00 AM Location: Isenberg School of Management, Room 112 |
| Speaker: William Thomas Department of History of Science Harvard University, Cambridge, MA |
| Biography: Will Thomas is a 3rd year graduate student
in the History of Science Department at Harvard University. He
has been interested in the history of OR since writing his senior
thesis on the topic while a history major at Northwestern
University. His dissertation proposal entitled A Veteran Science: Operations Research and
Postwar Anglo-American Scientific Culture has just been accepted
and he is in the beginning stages of research on a project that over
the next two and a half years will explore how scientists and their
patrons drew upon the wartime experience of military operations
research sections in such diverse historical developments as the
professionalization of OR in industry and academics, the groundbreaking
studies of the RAND Corporation and the involvement of elite British
scientists in political affairs. Aside from his interest in OR and related fields, Will has also done research in the history of environmental thought and the history of physics. He is currently organizing meetings of the History of the Physical Sciences Working Group at Harvard. As an undergraduate he minored in physics and has published articles in the field of experimental nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). |
| TITLE: The Postwar Establishment
of OR in Academics and Industry |
| Abstract: This talk presents a review of
existing research on the postwar spread of OR as well as my most
current research. In it, I examine how early advocates for the
postwar spread of OR crystallized their wartime experience into their
own work. I will focus primarily upon the establishment of an OR
curriculum at MIT, particularly regarding the efforts of the OR pioneer
Philip Morse. What we can see from this particular slice of the
history is a shift in OR from an ill-defined activity dominated by its
wartime heritage to a field with an independent peacetime identity |
| This series is organized by the
UMASS Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter. Support for this series is
provided by the Isenberg School of Management, the Department of
Finance and Operations Management, and the John F. Smith Memorial Fund. For questions, please contact the INFORMS Student Chapter President, Ms. Tina Wakolbinger, wakolbinger@som.umass.edu |