History
Fermat and Lagrange found calculus-based formulas for identifying optima, while Newton and Gauss proposed iterative methods for moving towards an optimum. Historically, the first term for optimization was "linear programming", which was due to George B. Dantzig, although much of the theory had been introduced by Leonid Kantorovich in 1939. Dantzig published the Simplex algorithm in 1947, and John von Neumann developed the theory of duality in the same year.
The term programming in this context does not refer to computer programming. Rather, the term comes from the use of program by the United States military to refer to proposed training and logistics schedules, which were the problems Dantzig studied at that time.
Later important researchers in mathematical optimization include the following:
|
|
Read more about this topic: Mathematical Optimization
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“They are a sort of post-house,where the Fates
Change horses, making history change its tune,
Then spur away o’er empires and o’er states,
Leaving at last not much besides chronology,
Excepting the post-obits of theology.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)