From the Editor: In Memoriam, Rick Rosenthal and Mike Rothkopf

Abstract

The OR community at large, and the OR practice community in particular, lost two great leaders this year. Rick Rosenthal passed away on January 3, 2008 after a hard-fought battle with cancer. Mike Rothkopf died unexpectedly on February 18, 2008 while swimming at the McCoy Natatorium at Perm State University. In this issue we have two papers to honor these colleagues who were so supportive and involved in OR practice. Rick Rosenthal was a Distinguished Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. I knew Rick for over 20 years. He was very much focused on practice and solving real-world prob lems. He was instrumental in getting young faculty involved in the INFORMS Practice Meeting held each spring. Last year I became aware of a talk Rick and Jerry Brown had been giving on practical optimiza tion. After some prodding from me, Rick and Jerry began the process of transforming their talk into an Interfaces paper. Their paper, Optimization Trade craft: Hard-Won Insights from Real-World Decision Support, appears in this issue. I thank Jerry for seeing the paper through to completion. I believe aca demics and practitioners (and those of us who con sider ourselves in the intersection) will find this paper very informative. As someone who teaches optimiza tion, I certainly plan to use it in my classes. Mike past president of INFORMS and former editor in chief of this journal, had long been very active in OR practice. Mike had just joined Penn State in the fall of 2007 after many years at Rut gers. I also knew Mike for a long time. When I became the editor in chief of Interfaces, Mike went out of his way to offer me advice based on his experi ence. He also always had provocative and encourag ing words for academics focused on practice. Mike was probably most famous for his work on auctions, and so it is fitting that his colleagues Ron Harstad and Aleksandar Sasa Pekec have written a paper on auctions in Mike's honor. Their paper, Relevance to Practice and Auction Theory: A Memorial Essay to Michael Rothkopf, appears in this issue. It illustrates just how significant Mike's contributions to auctions were and how he emphasized the need to focus on practice. We mourn the loss of these two great friends and colleagues and remain grateful for their contributions and the impact they have had on the profession.