Past Awards
The 2015 Lanchester Prize is awarded to Michele Conforti, Gérard Cornuéjols, and Giacomo Zambelli for their book Integer Programming, Springer, Switzerland, 2014.
Advances in the theory of integer programming have gone hand in hand with advances in solving integer programs in practice. This textbook presents the fundamentals of the area, highlighting the mathematical elegance of the foundations of the field, as well as bringing the reader to the edge of the research frontier. The writing blends clarity of exposition with a dedication to infusing the reader with the needed geometric intuition. Several well-known results especially benefit from this fresh presentation, including the theory of split inequalities and the explicit description of the convex hull of a finite union of polyhedra. Even the most recent theoretical gems are included, such as the exponential lower bound on the size of extended formulations of the matching polytope as well as the power of hierarchies of relaxations based on semidefinite programming. This advanced theory is complemented by a thorough development of the algorithmic and modeling aspects of the area, making this a truly complete survey of integer programming, which will serve the next generation of researchers to further advance the field in the years ahead.
The committee members (David Shmoys, chair, Michael Ferris, Ramesh Johari, Chung Piaw Teo, Bert Zwart) are pleased to designate Michele Conforti, Gérard Cornuéjols, and Giacomo Zambelli as recipients of the 2015 Lanchester Prize.