Barn at Horsted Pond Farm, Lewes Road, Uckfield, East Sussex - geograph

Roger Tatham Eddison (16 September 1916,

Yokohama is the second-largest city in Japan by population and the most populous municipality of Japan. It is the capital city and the most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a 2020 population of 3.8 million. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of T ...

– 2000) was an

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

practitioner 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 decis ...

. He was Joint Editor of ''Operational Research Quarterly'' from 1950 to 1958. He was President of the Operational Research Society 1966-1967.

Early life

Eddison was born in Yokohama, the youngest of four sons, the twins

Robert The name Robert is an ancient Germanic given name, from Proto-Germanic "fame" and "bright" (''Hrōþiberhtaz''). Compare Old Dutch ''Robrecht'' and Old High German ''Hrodebert'' (a compound of '' Hruod'' ( non, Hróðr) "fame, glory, honou ...

and Talbot Leadam Eddison being born in 1908. However his father, Edwin Eddison, a civil engineer died when he was six months old, and his mother, Hilda Muriel Leadham returned to England with her young family by way of Canada. Although her family came from

Leeds Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by popula ...

, she settled in Haywards Heath and Roger attended Charterhouse School followed by Pembroke College, Cambridge.

Second World War

At the outbreak of the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

Eddison joined the Army and was commissioned in the

Royal Artillery The Royal Regiment of Artillery, commonly referred to as the Royal Artillery (RA) and colloquially known as "The Gunners", is one of two regiments that make up the artillery arm of the British Army. The Royal Regiment of Artillery comprises t ...

and was then sent to the

Royal Military College of Science The Royal Military College of Science (RMCS) was a British postgraduate school, research institution and training provider with origins dating back to 1772. It became part of the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom in 2009, and ceased to exist ...

where he served as a Technical Officer. He attained the rank of Major and title Chief Inspector of Fuses. It was in this period he became interested in statistics. Following the

, Eddison first went to the

Rothamsted Experimental Station Rothamsted Research, previously known as the Rothamsted Experimental Station and then the Institute of Arable Crops Research, is one of the oldest agricultural research institutions in the world, having been founded in 1843. It is located at Har ...

, where he worked as a statistician with Frank Yates.

Head of OR at British Iron and Steel Research Association

However, in 1948 when he saw an advert for a job in the Operation Research Department of the

British Iron and Steel Research Association The British Iron and Steel Research Association or BISRA, formed in 1944, was the research arm of the British steel industry. It had headquarters in London, originally at 11 Park Lane, later moved to 24 Buckingham Gate, with Laboratories in Shef ...

(BISRA), he applied and

Charles Goodeve Sir Charles Frederick Goodeve (21 February 1904 – 7 April 1980) was a Canadian chemist and pioneer in operations research. During World War II, he was instrumental in developing the "hedgehog" antisubmarine warfare weapon and the degaussing m ...

offered him the job of running the place."Operational Research Society Awards" (1970), ''Operational Research Quarterly'', Vol. 21, No. 1 (Mar., 1970), pp. 23-24 One of their first tasks was to respond to concerns raised by the

Ministry of Transport A ministry of transport or transportation is a ministry responsible for transportation within a country. It usually is administered by the ''minister for transport''. The term is also sometimes applied to the departments or other government ag ...

as regards delays to ships experienced at British ports. After successfully resolving these problems his team helped the Steel Company of Wales with general problems of ore handling. This led to the company creating its own OR department under Steve Cook. By now the BISRA team now had about sixteen staff, and focused on various studies of smaller steel companies that did not have their own department.

Science in General Management

In 1961 he joined

Stafford Beer Anthony Stafford Beer (25 September 1926 – 23 August 2002) was a British theorist, consultant and professor at the Manchester Business School. He is best known for his work in the fields of operational research and management cybernetics. ...

in establishing SIGMA (Science in General Management), a management consultancy firm.

Family life

Roger married Rosemary in 1941, with whom he had two sons and a daughter, Charles, Hugh and Sally. In 1953 he bought Horsted Pond Farm in

Little Horsted Little Horsted (also known as ''Horsted Parva'') is a village and civil parish in the Wealden district of East Sussex, England. It is located two miles (3.2 km) south of Uckfield, on the A26 road. The village is recorded in the Domesday ...

. Here he grew hemp and raised a dairy herd and carried out experiments with his crops.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Eddison, Roger 1916 births 2000 deaths British operations researchers English statisticians British Army personnel of World War II Royal Artillery officers