The Easy Chair: What Did Those Early Pioneers Have Uppermost in Mind, Model Building or Problem Solving?

Recently the Committee on the Next Decade in Operations Research cited the earliest OR experience in the UK as support for an emphasis on “building and analyzing models” as being central to OR. Based on the literature of that time and my own experience, this citation is not a faithful representation of the work of the OR pioneers. Rather, while they were primarily driven by problems, their view of theory and practice was a balanced one, conditioned by continuing involvement with the problems of the organization they served.