Merrill M. Flood

Merrill Meeks Flood (1908 – 1991^[1]) was an American mathematician, notable for developing, with Melvin Dresher, the basis of the game theoretical Prisoner's dilemma model of cooperation and conflict while being at RAND in 1950 (Albert W. Tucker gave the game its prison-sentence interpretation, and thus the name by which it is known today).^[2]

Biography

Flood received an MA in mathematics at the University of Nebraska, and a PhD at Princeton University in 1935 under the supervision of Joseph Wedderburn, for the dissertation Division by Non-singular Matric Polynomials.

In the 1930s he started working at Princeton University, and after the War he worked at the Rand Corporation, Columbia University, the University of Michigan ^[3] and the University of California.

In the 1950s Flood was one of the founding members of TIMS^{[disambiguation needed ]} and its second President in 1955. End 1950s he was among the first members of the Society for General Systems Research. In 1961, he was elected President of ORSA^{[disambiguation needed ]}, and from 1962 to 1965 he served as Vice President of the Institute of Industrial Engineers. In 1983 he was awarded ORSA's George E. Kimball Medal.

Work

Flood is considered a pioneer in the field of management science and operations research, who has been able to apply their techniques to problems on many levels of society. According to Xu (2001) "as early as 1936-1946, he applied innovative systems analysis to public problems and developed cost-benefit analysis in the civilian sector and cost effectiveness analysis in the military sector".^[3]

Traveling salesman problem

In the 1940’s Flood publicized the name Traveling salesman problem (TSP) within the mathematical community at mass. Flood publicized the traveling salesman problem in 1948 by presenting it at the RAND Corporation. According to Flood “when I was struggling with the problem in connecting with a school-bus routing study in New Jersey”.^[4]

Hitchcock transportation problem

Equally at home in his original field of the mathematics of matrices and in the pragmatic trenches of the industrial engineer, his research addressed an impressive array of operations research problems. His 1953 paper on the Hitchcock transportation problem is often cited, but he also published work on the traveling salesman problem, and an algorithm for solving the von Neumann hide and seek problem.^[3]

Publications

• 1948, A Game Theoretic Study of the Tactics of Area Defense, RAND Research Memorandum
• 1949, Illustrative example of application of Koopmans' transportation theory to scheduling military tanker fleet, RAND Research Memorandum.
• 1951, A Preference Experiment. RAND Research Paper
• 1951, A Preference Experiment (Series 2, Trial 1).RAND Research Paper
• 1952, A Preference Experiment (Series 2, Trials 2, 3, 4). RAND Research Paper
• 1952, Aerial Bombing Tactics : General Considerations (A World War II Study), RAND Research Memorandum.
• 1952, On Game-Learning Theory and Some Decision-Making Experiments. RAND Research Paper
• 1952, Preference Experiment. RAND Research Memorandum
• 1952, Some Group Interaction Models. RAND Research Memorandum

References

1. ^ http://www.oclc.org/rss/feeds/authorityrecords/20080420.htm
2. ^ Saul I. Gass (2005). An annotated timeline of operations research: an informal history. p.49.
3. ^ ^{a b c} Huixian Xu et al. (2001). "Merrill M. Flood: 2nd President of TIMS (1955) and 10th President of ORSA, 1961-62". Accessed April 15, 2008
4. ^ Leonardo Zambito, The Traveling Salesman Problem: A Comprehensive Survey fall 2006. Retrieved 15 April 2008.

External links

• Biography from the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)
• An interview by Albert Tucker (San Francisco on 14 May 1984).

Persondata
Name	Flood, Merrill M.
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Date of birth	1912
Place of birth
Date of death	1991
Place of death