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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 Balas
from 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