Mathematical Programming Society

Known as the Mathematical Programming Society until 2010,^[1] the Mathematical Optimization Society (MOS) is an international association of researchers active in optimization. The MOS encourages the research, development, and use of optimization—including mathematical theory, software implementation, and practical applications (operations research).

Founded in 1973, the MOS has several activities: Publishing journals and a newsletter, organizing and cosponsoring conferences, and awarding prizes.

History

In the 1960s, mathematical programming methods were gaining increasing importance both in mathematical theory and in industrial application. To provide a discussion forum for researchers in the field arose, the journal Mathematical Programming was founded in 1970.

Based on activities by George Dantzig, Albert Tucker, Phil Wolfe and others, the MOS was founded in 1973, with George Dantzig as its first president.

Activities

Conferences

Several conferences are organized or co-organized by the Mathematical Optimization Society, for instance:

• The International Symposium on Mathematical Programming (ISMP), organized every three years, is open to all fields of mathematical programming.
• The Integer Programming and Combinatorial Optimization (IPCO) conference is the most important conference in Integer programming and is always held in those years where there is no ISMP.
• The International Conference on Continuous Optimization (ICCOPT), the continuous analog of the IPCO conference, was first held in 2004.
• The International Conference on Stochastic Programming (ICSP) takes place every three years and is devoted to optimization using uncertain input data.
• The Nordic MOS conference is a biannual meeting of researchers from Scandinavia working in all fields of optimization.
• At the Université de Montréal, annual seminars on changing topics are organized by the MOS.

Journals and Prizes

The Mathematical Optimization Society publishes several journals:

• Mathematical Programming (series A/B) is one of the most renowned journals in this research area. While series A publishes articles from all fields of optimization, each issue of series B is devoted to a particular subject.
• Optima, the newsletter of the MOS, contains articles on optimization, conference information and book reviews.
• MPS/SIAM Series on Optimization is a series of books that is jointly published by the MOS (formerly MPS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). It has published monographs, textbooks, books collecting applications of optimization, and tutorials.

The MOS awards a number of important prizes in the field of optimization. In particular, this includes the Fulkerson Prize, the Dantzig Prize and the Tucker Prize.

George B. Dantzig Prize

Since 1979 in cooperation with the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics SIAM the Mathematical Optimization Society awards the George B. Dantzig Prize for "original research that has had a major impact on the field of mathematical programming". This prize was first awarded in 1982 to Michael J. D. Powell and R. Tyrrell Rockafellar.^[2]

Since then it has been awarded every three years; the recipients are Ellis L. Johnson^[3] and Manfred W. Padberg (1985), Michael J. Todd (1988), Martin Grötschel and Arkadi Nemirovski (1991), Claude Lemaréchal and Roger J-B Wets (1994), Roger Fletcher and Stephen M. Robinson (1997), Yurii Nesterov (2000), Jong-Shi Pang and Alexander Schrijver (2003), Eva Tardos (2006).^[2]

References

1. ^ The Mathematical Optimization Society was known as the Mathematical Programming Society (MPS) until 2010.
2. ^ ^{a b} Freund, Robert (November 1994). "Professor George Dantzig: Linear Programming Founder Turns 80". SIAM News. http://www.stanford.edu/group/SOL/dantzig.html. 
3. ^ "Ellis Johnson, Coca-Cola Chaired Professor in the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia tech". http://www2.isye.gatech.edu/~ejohnson/. 

External links

• Homepage of the Mathematical Optimization Society