In Memoriam: Harvey J. Greenberg (1940-2018)

Harvey J. Greenberg died on June 29 after a distinguished career full of notable, sweeping and enduring contributions to O.R. and its professional organizations. He was named an INFORMS fellow in 2011 for his longstanding contributions at the intersection of O.R., computer science and application, and he was awarded the 1999 Harold Larnder Prize by the Canadian Operational Research Society. The INFORMS Computing Society (ICS) initiated the “Harvey J. Greenberg Award for Service to the ICS” in 2007 in honor of his substantial imprint on, and patronage to, the society. 

A professor emeritus of mathematical sciences and statistics at the University of Colorado in Denver where he taught mathematics for 25 years before his retirement in 2008, Professor Greenberg’s research crossed many traditional taxonomic divisions, and he published in theory and application, in the continuous and discrete, and in the stochastic and deterministic. He wrote software bellwethers that aided optimization’s industrial utility, and he played a pivotal role in the Federal Energy Administration as it advised the White House on national policy to address the energy crisis of the 1970s. 

Early on, Professor Greenberg recognized the importance of the operations research/computer science interface, and he was intimately involved in important research on this topic. He was the founding editor of the INFORMS Journal on Computing (then the ORSA Journal on Computing), and he served on several other editorial boards, including that of Operations Research. He co-founded the Computer Science Special Interest Group (CS SIG) within ORSA (later the INFORMS Computing Society), and as its second chair, he led the effort to transform the CS SIG into the ORSA Computer Science Technical Section, which became the ICS in 1998. 

He also helped organize the first CSTS Symposium held in 1985, which later became the biennial ICS conference. In 1993, he contributed the first book in the OR/CS Series entitled “A Computer-Assisted Analysis System for Mathematical Programming Models and Solutions: A User’s Guide for ANALYZE.” He also created the online Mathematical Programming Glossary, a much-used feature of the ICS website. 

In addition to his volunteer work on behalf of INFORMS and its predecessors ORSA and TIMS, Professor Greenberg directed O.R. activities within SIAM, the Mathematical Programming Society, the ACM and NATO. 

Those who knew him well say Professor Greenberg was ardent in all that he approached, and his ceaseless creativity was legendary among his friends and colleagues. He encouraged and welcomed many young professionals and academics, and he was a longtime supporter of equal and civil rights. Professor Greenberg gave much to INFORMS and its forerunners, ORSA and TIMS, and he did so with heartfelt energy and fertile ingenuity. 

Professor Greenberg developed Computer-Assisted Analysis in the 1970s and 80s, creating an artificially intelligent environment for analyzing mathematical programming models and their results. This earned him the first ICS Prize for “research excellence in the interfaces between operations research and computer science” in 1986, notably for his software system, ANALYZE. He received several research awards after that, including the aforementioned Larnder Prize for international distinction in operational research. 

During his 30 years of professional development, Professor Greenberg introduced many courses in the OR/CS interface, including computational biology. He applied O.R. methods to computer science problems, ranging from using queuing theory for optimal list structure design to using integer programming for bioinformatic database search. He also applied computer science to O.R. problems, ranging from super-sparse information structures to the use of compiler design in ANALYZE. 

Harvey Greenberg was born in Philadelphia to Morris and Ada Greenberg on Oct. 16, 1940. When he was a teenager, his family moved to Miami, Fla. Following high school, he earned a B.S. degree in industrial engineering from the University of Miami in 1962 and a Ph.D. in operations research from Johns Hopkins University in 1968. During his career, he held academic positions at Southern Methodist University and Virginia Tech before joining the faculty at the University of Colorado. Following his retirement in 2008, he held an adjunct research professorship in the Engineering and Technology Management Department at Portland State University where he remained actively engaged in ICS. 

A devoted husband and loving father, Harvey Greenberg’s gregarious personality motivated his joy of spending time with family and friends. He is survived by his wife, Ellie Greenberg of Denver, his daughter, Chari, son-in-law, Tom, and grandsons, Miles and Max, in Portland. He was preceded in death by his son, Ari Greenberg. 

The INFORMS community celebrates Professor Greenberg’s numerous contributions as it mourns his passing. Contributions in tribute of Harvey Greenberg’s lasting memory within the INFORMS community can be made to: INFORMS, Attn: Harvey J. Greenberg Award for Service Memorial, 5521 Research Park Drive, Suite 200, Catonsville, MD 21228. 

Sources: Allen Holder, Fred Murphy, Bill Pierskalla, INFORMS and the Greenberg family.