Abraham Charnes

Brief Biography

Abraham Charnes was a major participant in the advancement of operations research, linear programming, optimization, mathematics, and numerous other areas. He was one of the great figures in management sciences and a pivotal character in the establishment of The Institute of Management Sciences (TIMS). Charnes was born in Hopewell, Virginia and moved to Chicago when he was six years old. He attended a technical high school and entered the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) where he received all of his degrees. Studying mathematics, Charnes paused his education to serve in the U.S. Navy Bureau of Ordnance during World War II. After working on such problems as electromagnetics, torpedo control, and weapon damage assessment, he returned to Illinois to earn his PhD.

After his graduation, Charnes began a lengthy academic career, starting first at Carnegie Institute of Technology (1948-1955). At Carnegie, he taught  Carlton E. Lemke. It was here where Charnes also met lifelong collaborator, William W. Cooper. Charnes would later move to Purdue University and Northwestern University to teach applied mathematics. In 1968, he eventually settled at the University of Texas at Austin where he was hired by his former colleague and dean of the business school, George Kozmetsky. Charnes remained in Austin until his death in 1992.

Charnes made a variety of contributions to operations research and management sciences.  In his research, Charnes devised new mathematical formulations that were motivated by real-world applications and incorporated traditional, theoretical approaches. With Cooper, he jointly developed such areas as goal programming and data envelopment analysis (DEA), a form of linear programming that determines whether decision making units in an organization are making efficient use of their inputs and outputs, and fractional programming, an approach that optimizes ratios, such as profit/capital, that are not typically linear functions of the decision variables.

Over his career, Charnes developed a serious interest in the application to operations research in transportation problems. During his Purdue and Northwestern years, he offered mixed-integer programming solutions to transportation issues. This focus extended to broader engineering areas as well. He investigated applications that stemmed from sanitary and environment engineering. As a member of Kozmetsky’s renowned faculty at the University of Texas, Charnes explored financing areas and developed financial flow models with Merton Miller.

Charnes received numerous accolades for his work. During an event celebrating his sixtieth birthday, Charnes received the U.S. Navy Medal for Public Service, the Navy’s highest civilian award. In 1982, he was jointly awarded the John von Neumann Theory Prize of ORSA and TIMS with Cooper and Richard J. Duffin. They were recognized for their “fundamental contributions to optimization methods, concepts, and models for problems of decision, planning and design.” In 2006, he was posthumously awarded the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences’ IMPACT Prize for his development of DEA. As of Spring 2015, Charnes is one of only twenty-three individuals to be elected into the International Federation of Operational Research Societies’ Hall of Fame. 

With Cooper, Kozmetsky, Merrill Flood, Andrew Vazsonyi, and Mel Salveson, Charnes played a major role in the establishment of TIMS. He served as the organization’s seventh president. Over his entire career, he published over four hundred articles and seven books. In addition to his significant research strides, Charnes is fondly remembered for the influence he had on his students as a phenomenal educator.

Other Biographies

Profiles in Operations Research: Abraham Charnes
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INFORMS. Miser-Harris Presidential Gallery: Abraham Charnes. Accessed February 26, 2015. (link)

Kortanek KO (1980), „A Biography of Professor A. Charnes and His Scientific Work“, In:  A. V. Fiacco and  K. O. Kortanek (Eds.), Extremal Methods and Systems Analysis An International Symposium on the Occasion of Professor Abraham Charnes’ Sixtieth Birthday Austin, Texas, September 13 – 15, 1977, pp. 2 – 9.

Phillips F, Seiford L (2006) IFORS' Operational Research Hall of Fame: Abraham Charnes. International Transactions in Operations Research, 13(3): 273-277. (link)