Merrill Meeks Flood (1908 – 1991) was an American mathematician, notable for developing, with

Melvin Dresher Melvin Dresher (born Dreszer; March 13, 1911 – June 4, 1992) was a Polish-born American mathematician, notable for developing, with Merrill Flood, the game theoretical model of cooperation and conflict known as the Prisoner's dilemma while at ...

, the basis of the game theoretical

Prisoner's dilemma The Prisoner's Dilemma is an example of a game analyzed in game theory. It is also a thought experiment that challenges two completely rational agents to a dilemma: cooperate with their partner for mutual reward, or betray their partner ("def ...

model of cooperation and conflict while being at

RAND The RAND Corporation (from the phrase "research and development") is an American nonprofit global policy think tank created in 1948 by Douglas Aircraft Company to offer research and analysis to the United States Armed Forces. It is finan ...

in 1950 ( Albert W. Tucker gave the game its prison-sentence interpretation, and thus the name by which it is known today).

Biography

Flood received an MA in mathematics at the

University of Nebraska A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, ...

, and a PhD at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

in 1935 under the supervision of

Joseph Wedderburn Joseph Henry Maclagan Wedderburn FRSE FRS (2 February 1882 – 9 October 1948) was a Scottish mathematician, who taught at Princeton University for most of his career. A significant algebraist, he proved that a finite division algebra is a fi ...

, for the dissertation ''Division by Non-singular Matric Polynomials''. In the 1930s he started working at

, and after the War he worked at the Rand Corporation,

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

, the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

Huixian Xu et al. (2001).
Merrill M. Flood: 2nd President of TIMS (1955) and 10th President of ORSA, 1961–62"
. Accessed April 15, 2008 and the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Franci ...

. In the 1950s Flood was one of the founding members of TIMS and its second President in 1955. End 1950s he was among the first members of the

Society for General Systems Research The International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS) is a worldwide organization for systems sciences. The overall purpose of the ISSS is: :"to promote the development of conceptual frameworks based on general system theory, as well as their ...

. In 1961, he was elected President of the

Operations Research Society of America The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) is an international society for practitioners in the fields of operations research (O.R.), management science, and analytics. It was established in 1995 with the merger o ...

(ORSA), and from 1962 to 1965 he served as Vice President of the

Institute of Industrial Engineers The Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE), formerly the Institute of Industrial Engineers, is a professional society dedicated solely to the support of the industrial engineering profession and individuals involved with improving ...

. In 1983 he was awarded ORSA's

George E. Kimball Medal George Elbert Kimball (July 12, 1906 – December 6, 1967) was an American professor of quantum chemistry, and a pioneer of operations research algorithms during World War II. Early life George E. Kimball was born to Arthur G. Kimball in Chic ...

. He was elected to the 2002 class of

Fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

s of the

Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) is an international society for practitioners in the fields of operations research (O.R.), management science, and analytics. It was established in 1995 with the merger o ...

Work

Flood is considered a pioneer in the field of

management science Management science (or managerial science) is a wide and interdisciplinary study of solving complex problems and making strategic decisions as it pertains to institutions, corporations, governments and other types of organizational entities. It is ...

and

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 ...

, who has been able to apply their techniques to problems on many levels of society. According to Xu (2001) "as early as 1936–1946, he applied innovative

systems analysis Systems analysis is "the process of studying a procedure or business to identify its goal and purposes and create systems and procedures that will efficiently achieve them". Another view sees system analysis as a problem-solving technique that ...

to public problems and developed cost-benefit analysis in the civilian sector and cost effectiveness analysis in the military sector".

Traveling salesman problem

In the 1940s Flood publicized the name

Traveling salesman problem The travelling salesman problem (also called the travelling salesperson problem or TSP) asks the following question: "Given a list of cities and the distances between each pair of cities, what is the shortest possible route that visits each cit ...

(TSP) within the mathematical community at mass. Flood publicized the traveling salesman problem in 1948 by presenting it at the RAND Corporation. According to Flood "when I was struggling with the problem in connecting with a school-bus routing study in New Jersey". Even more important, as far as common usage goes, Dr. Flood himself claimed to have coined the term "software" in the late 1940s.

Hitchcock transportation problem

Equally at home in his original field of the mathematics of matrices and in the pragmatic trenches of the industrial engineer, his research addressed an impressive array of operations research problems. His 1953 paper on the Hitchcock transportation problem is often cited, but he also published work on the traveling salesman problem, and an algorithm for solving the von Neumann hide and seek problem.

Publications

* 1948, ''A Game Theoretic Study of the Tactics of Area Defense'', RAND Research Memorandum * 1949, ''Illustrative example of application of Koopmans' transportation theory to scheduling military tanker fleet'', RAND Research Memorandum. * 1951, ''A Preference Experiment''. RAND Research Paper * 1951, ''A Preference Experiment (Series 2, Trial 1)''.RAND Research Paper * 1952, ''A Preference Experiment (Series 2, Trials 2, 3, 4)''. RAND Research Paper * 1952, ''Aerial Bombing Tactics : General Considerations (A World War II Study),'' RAND Research Memorandum. * 1952, ''On Game-Learning Theory and Some Decision-Making Experiments''. RAND Research Paper * 1952, ''Preference Experiment''. RAND Research Memorandum * 1952, ''Some Group Interaction Models''. RAND Research Memorandum

References

External links

Biography of Merrill Flood
from the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)

(San Francisco on May 14, 1984). {{DEFAULTSORT:Flood, Merrill M. 1908 births 1991 deaths 20th-century American mathematicians Game theorists American operations researchers Princeton University alumni RAND Corporation people University of Michigan staff University of Michigan faculty Fellows of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences