Editorial: The First MS/OR Practitioner: Niccolò Machiavelli

We have all read accounts of management science's growth out of activities in the Second World War. Yet this story is not entirely accurate. Inventory analysis and queuing, for example, originated at the beginning of this century. Our antecedents actually extend even further back in history—to the Italian renaissance. My nomination for the first practitioner of management science is Niccolò Machiavelli, who lived from 1469 to 1527 in Florence, Italy. His book, The Prince, written in 1513, is the first text on the practice of management science.