Richard Robert Weber (born 25 February 1953) is a

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

working in

operational research Operations research ( en-GB, operational research) (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a discipline that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve deci ...

. He is

Emeritus ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

Churchill Professor of Mathematics for Operational Research The Churchill Professorship of Mathematics for Operational Research is a professorship in operational research at the University of Cambridge. It was established in 1966 by a benefaction from Esso in memory of Sir Winston Churchill Sir Wi ...

in the Statistical Laboratory, University of Cambridge. Weber was educated at

Walnut Hills High School , streetaddress = 3250 Victory Parkway , city = Cincinnati , state = Ohio , zipcode = 45207 , country = United States , coordinates = , type ...

Solihull School Solihull School is a coeducational Independent school (UK), independent day school in Solihull, West Midlands (county), West Midlands, England. Founded in 1560, it is the oldest school in the town and is a member of the Headmasters' and Headmi ...

and

Downing College, Cambridge Downing College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge and currently has around 650 students. Founded in 1800, it was the only college to be added to Cambridge University between 1596 and 1869, and is often described as the olde ...

. He graduated in 1974, and completed his PhD in 1980 under the supervision of Peter Nash. He has been on the faculty of the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

since 1978, and a fellow of

Queens' College Queens' College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Queens' is one of the oldest colleges of the university, founded in 1448 by Margaret of Anjou. The college spans the River Cam, colloquially referred to as the "light s ...

since 1977 where he has been Vice President from 1996–2007 and again from 2018–2020. He was appointed Churchill Professor in 1994, and he became

Churchill Professor on retirement in 2017. He was Director of the Statistical Laboratory from 1999 to 2009, and is a trustee of the Rollo Davidson Trust. He works on the mathematics of large

complex systems A complex system is a system composed of many components which may interact with each other. Examples of complex systems are Earth's global climate, organisms, the human brain, infrastructure such as power grid, transportation or communication s ...

subject to

uncertainty Uncertainty refers to epistemic situations involving imperfect or unknown information. It applies to predictions of future events, to physical measurements that are already made, or to the unknown. Uncertainty arises in partially observable or ...

. He has made contributions to stochastic scheduling, Markov decision processes,

queueing theory Queueing theory is the mathematical study of waiting lines, or queues. A queueing model is constructed so that queue lengths and waiting time can be predicted. Queueing theory is generally considered a branch of operations research because the ...

, the

probabilistic analysis of algorithms Probability is the branch of mathematics concerning numerical descriptions of how likely an event is to occur, or how likely it is that a proposition is true. The probability of an event is a number between 0 and 1, where, roughly speaking ...

, the theory of communications pricing and control, and rendezvous search. Weber and his co-authors were awarded the 2007

INFORMS The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) is an international society for practitioners in the fields of operations research (O.R.), management science, and analytics. It was established in 1995 with the merger of ...

prize for their paper on the online

bin packing The bin packing problem is an optimization problem, in which items of different sizes must be packed into a finite number of bins or containers, each of a fixed given capacity, in a way that minimizes the number of bins used. The problem has ma ...

algorithm.

Selected publications

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Weber, Richard 1953 births 20th-century English mathematicians Alumni of Downing College, Cambridge 21st-century English mathematicians British operations researchers Fellows of Queens' College, Cambridge Living people Cambridge mathematicians People educated at Solihull School Professors of the University of Cambridge