Laurence Alexander Wolsey is an English mathematician working in the field of

integer programming An integer programming problem is a mathematical optimization or Constraint satisfaction problem, feasibility program in which some or all of the variables are restricted to be integers. In many settings the term refers to integer linear programmin ...

. He is a former president and research director of the Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE) at

Université catholique de Louvain The Université catholique de Louvain (also known as the Catholic University of Louvain, the English translation of its French name, and the University of Louvain, its official English name) is Belgium's largest French-speaking university. It ...

in Belgium. He is professor emeritus of applied mathematics at the engineering school of the same university.

Early life and education

Wolsey received a MSc in Mathematics from Cambridge in 1966 and a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

in 1969 under the supervision of Jeremy F. Shapiro.

Career

Wolsey was visiting researcher at the Manchester Business School in 1969–1971. He was invited by George L. Nemhauser as a Post-Doctoral student to CORE in Belgium in 1971. He met his future wife, Marguerite Loute, sister of CORE colleague Etienne Loute, and settled in Belgium. He was later a visiting professor at the London School of Economics in 1978–1979, at Cornell University in 1983, at Ecole polytechnique de Lausanne in 1986–1987, and Donders professor at University of Utrecht in 1998. Wolsey was the editor-in-chief of the ''Mathematical Programming'' journal from 1999 to 2003.

Research

Wolsey has made seminal contributions in duality theory for integer programming, submodular optimization, the group-theoretic approach and polyhedral analysis of fixed-charge network flow and production planning models.

Awards and honours

Wolsey has received the Beale-Orchard Hays Prize in 1988, the

Frederick W. Lanchester Prize The Frederick W. Lanchester Prize is an Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences prize (U.S. $5,000 cash prize and medallion) given for the best contribution to operations research and the management sciences published in Engli ...

in 1989, the

EURO Gold Medal The EURO Gold medal of the Association of European Operational Research Societies (EURO) is the highest distinction within Operations Research (OR) in Europe. The prize was first awarded to Hans-Jürgen Zimmermann in 1985. The medal is awarded a ...

in 1994, the

John von Neumann Theory Prize The John von Neumann Theory Prize of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) is awarded annually to an individual (or sometimes a group) who has made fundamental and sustained contributions to theory in operati ...

in 2012, and the Dantzig Prize in 2012. The ORBEL Wolsey award is a Belgian prize recognizing the best and most significant OR implementation contributed to Open-Source during the year.

Selected publications

* ''Integer and Combinatorial Optimization'' (with George L. Nemhauser, Wiley, 1988) * ''Integer Programming'' (Wiley, 1998) * ''Production Planning by Mixed Integer Programming'' (with Yves Pochet, Springer, 2006) * * * * *

References

External links

Google Scholar report
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INFORMS
Biography of Laurence Wolsey from the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences Year of birth missing (living people) Living people English mathematicians Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni Academic staff of the Université catholique de Louvain John von Neumann Theory Prize winners {{Improve categories, date=November 2020