Distributed Mind

I can't believe I had missed this one... At work recently I am working on a problem where I have to use the simplex algorithm, which is used to do linear programming (not necessarily related to programming, but which is a way to optimize formulas subject to some constraints where both the formula and the constraints are linear, if you know what that means); simplex is fairly simple but potentially very useful, since linear programming has many applications.I hadn't used simplex in a while and I was reading about it. The simplex algorithm was invented by one George Dantzig, who did lots of other work on optimization, evidently. Dantzig's contribution's were significant it sounds like (incidentally, he was also the origin of the story about the math student who mistakes an open problem for homework, and solves it), and just speaking as far as the simplex algorithm, it is pretty important, being widely used in optimization, at least of linear problems. Since its invention several decades ago, some theoretically better algorithms have been propsed but interestingly, practically speaking simplex is still often preferable. Furthermore, it has a lot of historical significance for me, since I spent waaaay to much time on it and linear programming in college (we had a whole semester course on it... plus I did some course work on non-linear optimization in graduate school, which is related, though it does not use the same algorithms), besides being useful to me now. But anyway, the point of all of this is that Dantzig died just too weeks ago and noone told me about it! I'm sort of disappointed more people weren't talking about it. The NY Times had an okay obituary on him (though it is now an archive article and costs - part of the vast "not-quite-web").