L. R. Ford, Jr.

Lester Randolph Ford, Jr. (born September 23, 1927, Houston) is an American mathematician specializing in network flow problems. He is the son of mathematician Lester R. Ford, Sr..[1]

Ford's paper with D. R. Fulkerson on the maximum flow problem and the Ford–Fulkerson algorithm for solving it, published as a technical report in 1954 and in a journal in 1956, established the max-flow min-cut theorem.[2][3] Ford also developed the Bellman–Ford algorithm for finding shortest paths in graphs that have negatively weighted edges before Bellman.

References

  1. ↑ O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Lester Randolph Ford", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews.
  2. ↑ Ford, L. R., Jr.; Fulkerson, D. R. (1956), "Maximal flow through a network", Canadian Journal of Mathematics 8: 399–404, doi:10.4153/cjm-1956-045-5, MR 0079251.
  3. ↑ Gass, Saul I.; Assad, Arjang (2005), "1954 Max-flow min-cut theorem", An annotated timeline of operations research: an informal history, International series in operations research & management science 75, Springer-Verlag, p. 96, ISBN 978-1-4020-8112-5.