Birthday of John J. Pershing (1860) – The Mathematics of Logistics

General Pershing led US forces in WWI. The logistics of moving troops and supplies is a massive optimisation problem: linear programming, network flows, and inventory theory. The earliest linear programming problem was the ‘transportation problem’ (1941 by Hitchcock). WWII saw the birth of operations research: minimising convoy losses (RAND), scheduling maintenance, and allocating scarce resources. The simplex method (Dantzig, 1947) revolutionised optimisation. Pershing didn’t do the math, but his success depended on the mathematicians who followed.