A review of the Tom Rozwadowski medal

HW Ittmann

doi:10.5784/29-1-147

Abstract

The Tom Rozwadowski (TR) medal is the most prestigious award of the Operations Research Society of South Africa (ORSSA). The award, first presented in 1971, was established in honour of one of ORSSA's founding members. Initially the medal was to be presented to a member of the society for a paper of most outstanding merit, but the rules were subsequently adapted and currently the medal is awarded to the best paper published during the previous calendar year. This review endeavours to present an analysis of all the award winning papers since its inception. The aim is three-fold, namely: to present a historical review, to detect any trends within Operations Research (OR) in South Africa and to present a view of OR in the country. The analysis indicates that these award-winning papers are very diverse in nature, which certainly epitomises OR in South Africa, but the sample is small and thus not representative enough to be used to draw strict conclusions about the evolution of OR in South Africa. The papers, in general, exhibit originality, quality and clarity of exposition while there is clear interaction between theory and practice.

Highlights

Introduction and backgroundThe Operations Research Society of South Africa (ORSSA) was formally founded in November 1969 (Geldenhuys & Rudolph 1999) having had its roots in the mining industry, dating back to the early fifties (Fatti 1988)
This paper presents a historical review of the Tom Rozwadowski (TR) medal winners, to detect any trends within OR in South Africa and to present a view of South African OR
This sample of research oriented TR papers is very small what is reflected in Table 4 is possibly a good representation of what happens in reality in the South African OR community

Summary

Introduction and background

The Operations Research Society of South Africa (ORSSA) was formally founded in November 1969 (Geldenhuys & Rudolph 1999) having had its roots in the mining industry, dating back to the early fifties (Fatti 1988). A tragic event in 1970 prompted the establishment of an award, the Tom Rozwadowski (TR) medal, to individual members of the society This was in line with a practice followed by other societies elsewhere in the world. In the case of the OR Society, the award is the Goodeve medal, named in memory of Sir Charles Goodeve, one of the founders and pioneers of civilian Operational Research (OR Society 2013) This medal is awarded “in recognition of the most outstanding contribution to the philosophy, theory or practice of OR published in the Journal of the OR Society (JORS) or OR Insight (ORI), within the relevant year.”. Some general comments concerning the medal are given as well as an analysis of the institutions of the winners, the journals within which the winning papers were published, the techniques used, the application areas and facts about the number of times some individuals have won the award.

Tom Rozwadowski — the person

Recipients

Important rules

D Raad and JH van Vuuren

Institutions

Journals within which papers were published

Techniques used in the award winning publications

Individual winners

Basic facts and application of rules

Award winning publications

Initial winners

Brief summaries for the rest of award winning work