Egon Balas (June 7, 1922 in
Cluj
Cluj-Napoca ( ; ), or simply Cluj ( , ), is a city in northwestern Romania. It is the second-most populous city in the country and the seat of Cluj County. Geographically, it is roughly equidistant from Bucharest (), Budapest () and Belgrade ( ...
, Romania – March 18, 2019) was an
applied mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change.
History
One ...
and a
professor
Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...
of industrial administration and applied mathematics at
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The institution was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools. In 1912, it became the Carnegie Institu ...
. He was the Thomas Lord Professor of Operations Research at Carnegie Mellon's
Tepper School of Business
The Tepper School of Business is the business school of Carnegie Mellon University. It is located in the university's campus in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The school offers degrees from the undergraduate through doctoral levels, in addition to ...
and did fundamental work in developing
integer and disjunctive programming.
Life and education
Balas was born in
Cluj
Cluj-Napoca ( ; ), or simply Cluj ( , ), is a city in northwestern Romania. It is the second-most populous city in the country and the seat of Cluj County. Geographically, it is roughly equidistant from Bucharest (), Budapest () and Belgrade ( ...
(Romania) in a
Hungarian Jewish
The history of the Jews in Hungary dates back to at least the Kingdom of Hungary, with some records even predating the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin in 895 CE by over 600 years. Written sources prove that Jewish communities lived i ...
family. His original name was Blatt, which was first changed to the Hungarian Balázs and then later to the Romanian Balaş. He was married to art historian
Edith Balas, a survivor of Auschwitz, with whom he had two daughters. He was imprisoned by the Communist authorities for several years after the war.
He left Romania in 1966 and accepted an appointment with
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The institution was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools. In 1912, it became the Carnegie Institu ...
in 1967. Balas obtained a "Diploma Licentiate" in
economics
Economics () is a behavioral science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services.
Economics focuses on the behaviour and interac ...
(
Bolyai University, 1949) and
Ph.D.s in economics (
University of Brussels, 1967) and mathematics (
University of Paris
The University of Paris (), known Metonymy, metonymically as the Sorbonne (), was the leading university in Paris, France, from 1150 to 1970, except for 1793–1806 during the French Revolution. Emerging around 1150 as a corporation associated wit ...
, 1968).
His mathematics PhD thesis was titled ''Minimax et dualité en programmation discrète'' and was written under the direction of
Robert Fortet.
Selected publications
*E. Balas, A. Saxena: Optimizing Over the Split Closure, ''Mathematical Programming'' 113, 2 (2008), 219–240.
*E. Balas, M. Perregaard: A Precise Correspondence Between Lift-and-Project Cuts, Simple Disjunctive Cuts, and Mixed Integer Gomory Cuts for 0-1 Programming, ''Mathematical Programming'' B (94), 2003; 221–245.
*E. Balas, S. Ceria,
G. Cornuéjols: Mixed 0-1 Programming by Lift-and-Project in a Branch-and-Cut Framework, ''Management Science'' 42, 1996; 1229–1246.
*E. Balas: The Prize Collecting Traveling Salesman Problem: II Polyhedral Results, ''Networks'' 25, 1995; 199–216.
*E. Balas, S. Ceria,
G. Cornuéjols: A Lift-and-Project Cutting Plane Algorithm for Mixed 0-1 Programs, ''Mathematical Programming'' 58, 1993; 295–324.
*E. Balas: The Prize Collecting Traveling Salesman Problem I, ''Networks'' 19, 1989; 621–636.
*E. Balas, J. Adams, D. Zawack: The Shifting Bottleneck Procedure for Job Shop Scheduling, ''Management Science'' 34, 1988; 391–401.
*E. Balas, V. Chvátal, J. Nesetril: On The Maximum-Weight Clique Problem, ''Mathematics of Operations Research'' 12, 1987; 522–536.
*E. Balas: Disjunctive Programming, ''Annals of Discrete Mathematics'' 5, 1979; 3–51.
*E. Balas: An Additive Algorithm for Linear Programming in Zero-One Variables, ''Operations Research'' 13 (4), 1965; 517–546.
Honors and awards
* National Academy of Engineering, 2006
* IFORS Hall of Fame, 2006
* Honorary Doctorate in Mathematics, University of Waterloo, 2005
* Hungarian Academy of Science, external member, 2004
* INFORMS Fellow, 2002
* Honorary Doctorate in Mathematics, Miguel Hernandez University, Elche, Spain, 2002
*
EURO Gold Medal, 2001
* John von Neumann Theory Prize, INFORMS, 1995
* Senior U.S. Scientist Award of the von Humboldt Foundation, 1980–1981
Notes
References
* E. Balas: ''Will to Freedom: A Perilous Journey through Fascism and Communism'' (Syracuse University Press, 2000) (translated in Hungarian, Romanian, French, Italian, and German).
* E. Balas: Some Thoughts on the Development of Integer Programming During My Research Career, ''European Journal of Operational Research'', 2002, 141 (1) pp. 1–7.
Further reading
* Graham K. Rand: Egon Balas, ''Profiles in Operations Research'' (eds.: A.A. Asad, S.L. Gass), International Series in Operations Research and Management Science, 147, Springer, 2011.
*
External links
*
Biography of Egon Balasfrom the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences
{{DEFAULTSORT:Balas, Egon
1922 births
2019 deaths
20th-century Hungarian mathematicians
Carnegie Mellon University faculty
Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering
John von Neumann Theory Prize winners
Fellows of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences
Scientists from Cluj-Napoca
20th-century Romanian mathematicians
Romanian emigrants to the United States
Babeș-Bolyai University alumni
Free University of Brussels (1834–1969) alumni
Members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences