Additions to the history of Hungarian operations research: 1957-1969

Abstract

The recent paper aims to contribute to the early history of the Hungarian operations research. As it is reviewed in the introductory chapter, there are several descriptions about the same period -- including memoirs, obituaries, historical notes -- with various points of views, and using a variety of sources. My approach is to supplement them from a different perspective, and to try to put the whole picture together. The overall conclusion is that the late 1950s and the 1960s were an extremely successful era for Hungarian operations research -- reflecting, of course, the social and economic situation of the country.

Chapter 2 deals with the sources: international (Scopus, Google Scholar), national (Arcanum, Matarka, MOKKA) databases, archives and repositories of universities, the Hungarian Academy of Science, some research institutes. (See footnotes of the chapter for references.) Chapter 3 describes the early international developments of operations research and management science, based mainly on the websites of major societies in the field. Chapter 4 arguments that the history of Hungarian operations research can be divided into three main stages: early developments until the end of the 1960s; the period of planned economy by the end of the 1980s with the regime change; and the progressive years of the new century with possible subperiods. It is no coincidence that the description of the institutional background of operations research overlaps with the establishment of the birth of computer science in Hungary, as it is shown in Chapter 5. The sixth chapter presents, in a somewhat unconventional way, the great contributors of the era.

Instead of chronological or alphabetical order I chose connecting people and certain areas of OR with their most important publications during this period. The chapter contains a very concise profile of more than 20 researchers and the data of more than 100 publications. Finally, Chapter 7 gives an overview on the general scientific impacts of operations research and its place on higher education.