Robert Fourer (born September 2, 1950) is a scientist working in the area of

operations 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 ...

and management science. He is currently President of AMPL Optimization, Inc and is Professor Emeritus of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences at

Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Charte ...

. Robert Fourer is recognized as being the designer of the popular modeling language for mathematical programming called

AMPL AMPL (A Mathematical Programming Language) is an algebraic modeling language to describe and solve high-complexity problems for large-scale mathematical computing (i.e., large-scale optimization and scheduling-type problems). It was developed b ...

. Together with David M. Gay and

Brian Kernighan Brian Wilson Kernighan (; born 1942) is a Canadian computer scientist. He worked at Bell Labs and contributed to the development of Unix alongside Unix creators Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie. Kernighan's name became widely known through co-au ...

he was awarded 1993 ORSA/CSTS Prize by the Computer Science Technical Section of the

Operations Research Society of America 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 o ...

, for writings on the design of mathematical programming systems and the AMPL modeling language. Robert Fourer was also awarded

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

for Natural Sciences in 2002. He was elected to the 2004 class of

Fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

s of the

Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences 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 ...

. Prior to the invention of AMPL, a series of articles by Fourer extended the

Simplex algorithm In mathematical optimization, Dantzig's simplex algorithm (or simplex method) is a popular algorithm for linear programming. The name of the algorithm is derived from the concept of a simplex and was suggested by T. S. Motzkin. Simplices are n ...

to allow for the objective to be convex separable piecewise-linear. He also worked with Sanjay Mehrotra to solve indefinite linear programming systems using an interior point method that was more numerically stable than other methods previously proposed.

Writings

''AMPL: A Modeling Language for Mathematical Programming, 2nd Ed.'' (2003 with David Gay and

)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fourer, Robert Living people American computer programmers Northwestern University faculty Programming language designers Scientists at Bell Labs American technology writers 1950 births Fellows of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences