25. E. Leonard Arnoff

After completing his World War II (WWII) military service, E.Leonard (Len) Arnoff returned to college and obtained a Ph.D. in mathematics in 1952. He then took a position as a mathematician with the precursor of the U.S. space agency. Soon afterwards, an out-of-the-blue telephone call set him on a distinguished career in operations research (OR); he joined the OR Group at the Case Institute of Technology, the first university to offer M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in OR. At Case, Len organized and directed seminal OR programs, led applied research projects, and co-authored the first comprehensive OR text, Introduction to Operations Research (1957), with C. West Churchman and Russell Ackoff. He then went on to create and direct one of the earliest management science groups within a management consulting organization. Len then became Dean of the College of Business, University of Cincinnati, and transformed it into a modern teaching and research institution. He served as president (1968–1969) of The Institute of Management Sciences (TIMS), president of the Omega Rho International Honor Society for Operations Research and Management Science, and was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences.