Steven Vajda

Steven Vajda (August 20, 1901 - December 10, 1995) played an important role in the development of mathematical programming and operational research for more than fifty years. He was a member of a select circle of innovative researchers that included George Dantzig, Abraham Charnes, W.W. Cooper, William Orchard-Hays, Martin Beale and others. He worked and taught as an actuary and as a mathematician in operational research from 1925 to 1995.

From 1939 until his death in 1995, he lived in the U.K. where he was a defence scientist with the Royal Naval Scientific Service, and a Professor at Birmingham and Sussex Universities. He was a Companion of the Operational Research Society, a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and a member of the Mathematical Association.

He is the author or coauthor of at least a dozen books on mathematical programming, game theory, manpower planning and statistics and of many journal publications and conference papers. He was fluent in a number of languages, including English, German, Hungarian, and French and had a good grasp of several others. He taught and mentored generations of students in Austria, Germany and the United Kingdom.