George Bernard Dantzig was an American mathematical scientist who made contributions to industrial engineering, operations research, computer science, economics, and statistics.
20 Facts About George Dantzig
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In statistics, George Dantzig solved two open problems in statistical theory, which he had mistaken for homework after arriving late to a lecture by Jerzy Neyman.
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At his death, George Dantzig was the Professor Emeritus of Transportation Sciences and Professor of Operations Research and of Computer Science at Stanford University.
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George Dantzig was born to Jewish parents; his father, Tobias Dantzig, was a mathematician and linguist, and his mother, Anja Dantzig, was a Russian-born linguist of French-Lithuanian origin.
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George Dantzig's parents met during their study at the University of Paris, where Tobias studied mathematics under Henri Poincare, after whom George Dantzig's brother was named.
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Early in the 1920s the George Dantzig family moved from Baltimore to Washington, DC His mother became a linguist at the Library of Congress, and his father became a math tutor at the University of Maryland, College Park.
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George Dantzig attended Powell Junior High School and Central High School.
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George Dantzig earned his master's degree in mathematics from the University of Michigan in 1937.
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George Dantzig arrived late and assumed that they were a homework assignment.
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George Dantzig had prepared one of Dantzig's solutions for publication in a mathematical journal.
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When George Dantzig suggested publishing jointly, Wald simply added George Dantzig's name as co-author.
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In 1952, George Dantzig joined the mathematics division of the RAND Corporation.
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George Dantzig was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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George Dantzig was the recipient of many honors, including the first John von Neumann Theory Prize in 1974, the National Medal of Science in 1975, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1976.
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George Dantzig was elected to the 2002 class of Fellows of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences.
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Freund wrote further that "through his research in mathematical theory, computation, economic analysis, and applications to industrial problems, George Dantzig contributed more than any other researcher to the remarkable development of linear programming".
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George Dantzig's work allows the airline industry, for example, to schedule crews and make fleet assignments.
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The founders of this subject are Leonid Kantorovich, a Russian mathematician who developed linear programming problems in 1939, George Dantzig, who published the simplex method in 1947, and John von Neumann, who developed the theory of the duality in the same year.
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George Dantzig was asked to work out a method the Air Force could use to improve their planning process.
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George Dantzig died on May 13,2005, in his home in Stanford, California, of complications from diabetes and cardiovascular disease.