Dantzig, George Bernard (1914–2005)

US mathematician. He was an expert in linear computer programming and operations research. His work was fundamental to many university courses in business studies, industrial engineering, and managerial sciences. Dantzig was involved in all the main areas of mathematical programming.

A fundamental problem in economics is the optimum allocation of scarce resources among competing activities – a problem that can be expressed in mathematical form. In 1947 Dantzig discovered that many such planning problems could be formulated as linear computer programs. He also devised an algorithm, known as the simplex method, which was widely adopted for the purpose.

Dantzig was born in Portland, Oregon, and educated at the universities of Maryland and Michigan. During World War II he became attached to the Statistical Control Headquarters of the US Air Force. He was a research mathematician with the Rand Corporation at Santa Monica, California, 1952–60, and then became a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, moving in 1966 to Stanford University, Palo Alto, California.