Editing George Dantzig (section)

== Career ==
With the outbreak of [[World War II]], Dantzig took a leave of absence from the doctoral program at Berkeley to work as a civilian for the [[United States Army Air Forces]]. From 1941 to 1946, he became the head of the combat analysis branch of the Headquarters Statistical Control for the Army Air Forces.<ref name= "JH05"/> In 1946, he returned to Berkeley to complete the requirements of his program and received his [[PhD]] that year.<ref name = "SR06"/> Although he had a faculty offer from Berkeley, he returned to the Air Force as mathematical advisor to the [[comptroller]].<ref name="mmp"/>

In 1952, Dantzig joined the mathematics division of the [[RAND Corporation]]. By 1960, he became a professor in the [[University of California, Berkeley College of Engineering|Department of Industrial Engineering]] at UC Berkeley, where he founded and directed the Operations Research Center. In 1966, he joined the Stanford faculty as Professor of Operations Research and of Computer Science. A year later, the Program in Operations Research became a full-fledged department. In 1973, he founded the Systems Optimization Laboratory (SOL) there. On a sabbatical leave that year, he managed the Methodology Group at the [[International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis]] (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria. Later, he became the C. A. Criley Professor of Transportation Sciences at [[Stanford University]].<ref name = "SR06"/>

He was a member of the [[United States National Academy of Sciences|National Academy of Sciences]], the [[National Academy of Engineering]], and the [[American Academy of Arts and Sciences]]. Dantzig was the recipient of many honors, including the first [[John von Neumann Theory Prize]] in 1974, the [[National Medal of Science]] in 1975,<ref>[https://www.nsf.gov/od/nms/recip_details.cfm?recip_id=95 National Science Foundation – The President's National Medal of Science]</ref> and an [[honorary doctorate]] from the [[University of Maryland, College Park]] in 1976. The [[Mathematical Programming Society]] honored Dantzig by creating the [[George B. Dantzig Prize]], bestowed every three years since 1982 on one or two people who have made a significant impact in the field of mathematical programming. He was elected to the 2002 class of [[Fellow]]s of the [[Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences]].<ref>{{citation|url=https://www.informs.org/Recognizing-Excellence/Fellows/Fellows-Alphabetical-List|title=Fellows: Alphabetical List|publisher=[[Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences]]|access-date=2019-10-09|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190510220119/https://www.informs.org/Recognizing-Excellence/Fellows/Fellows-Alphabetical-List|archive-date=2019-05-10|url-status=dead}}</ref>

=== Research ===
Freund wrote further that "through his research in mathematical theory, computation, economic analysis, and applications to industrial problems, Dantzig contributed more than any other researcher to the remarkable development of linear programming".<ref name="RF94">Robert Freund (1994). [http://www.stanford.edu/group/SOL/dantzig.html "Professor George Dantzig: Linear Programming Founder Turns 80"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090416184457/http://www.stanford.edu/group/SOL/dantzig.html |date=2009-04-16 }}. In: ''SIAM News'', November 1994.</ref>

Dantzig's work allows the airline industry, for example, to schedule crews and make fleet assignments. Based on his work, tools are developed "that shipping companies use to determine how many planes they need and where their delivery trucks should be deployed. The oil industry long has used linear programming in refinery planning, as it determines how much of its raw product should become different grades of gasoline and how much should be used for petroleum-based byproducts. It is used in manufacturing, revenue management, telecommunications, advertising, architecture, circuit design and countless other areas".<ref name= "JH05"/>

====Linear programming====
[[Linear programming]] is a mathematical method for determining a way to achieve the best outcome (such as maximum profit or lowest cost) in a given [[mathematical model]] for some list of requirements represented as linear relationships. Linear programming arose as a mathematical model developed during [[World War II]] to plan expenditures and returns in order to reduce costs to the army and increase losses to the enemy. It was kept secret until 1947. Postwar, many industries found its use in their daily planning.

The founders of this subject are [[Leonid Kantorovich]], a Russian mathematician who developed linear programming problems in 1939, Dantzig, who published the [[Simplex algorithm|simplex method]] in 1947, and [[John von Neumann]], who developed the theory of the [[duality (optimization)|duality]] in the same year.

Dantzig was asked to work out a method the Air Force could use to improve their planning process.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Biographical Profiles: Dantzig, George B.|url=https://www.informs.org/Explore/History-of-O.R.-Excellence/Biographical-Profiles/Dantzig-George-B|access-date=2020-10-30|website=INFORMS|language=en-US}}</ref>  This led to his original example of finding the best assignment of 70 people to 70 jobs, showing the usefulness of [[linear programming]]. The computing power required to test all the permutations to select the best assignment is vast; the number of possible configurations exceeds the number of particles in the universe. However, it takes only a moment to find the optimum solution by posing the problem as a linear program and applying the Simplex algorithm. The theory behind linear programming drastically reduces the number of possible optimal solutions that must be checked.

In 1963, Dantzig's ''Linear Programming and Extensions'' was published by [[Princeton University Press]]. The book quickly became a standard text in linear programming.