Ralph E. Gomory
| Ralph Gomory | |
|---|---|
| Born |
7 May 1929 Brooklyn Heights, New York |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | Thomas J. Watson Research Center |
| Alma mater |
Williams College (B.A., 1950) Princeton University (Ph.D., 1954) |
| Thesis | Critical Points at Infinity and Forced Oscillation (1954) |
| Doctoral advisor | Solomon Lefschetz |
| Known for | Gomory's cut |
| Notable awards |
Frederick W. Lanchester Prize (1963) IRI Medal (1985) National Medal of Science (1988) IEEE Ernst Weber Engineering Leadership Recognition (1988) Heinz Award (1998) |
Ralph Edward Gomory (born 7 May 1929) is an American applied mathematician and executive. Gomory worked at IBM as a researcher and later as an executive. During that time, his research led to the creation of new areas of applied mathematics.
After his career in the corporate world, Gomory became the president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, where he oversaw programs dedicated to broadening public understanding in three key areas: the economic importance of science and research; the effects of globalization on the United States; and the role of technology in education.
Gomory has written extensively on the nature of technology development, industrial competitiveness, models of international trade, and the function of the corporation in a globalizing world.
Gomory is the son of Andrew L. Gomory and Marian Schellenberg. He graduated from George School in Newtown, PA in 1946. He received his B.A. from Williams College in 1950, studied at Cambridge University, and received his Ph.D. in mathematics from Princeton University in 1954.
He served in the U.S. Navy from 1954 to 1957. While serving in the Navy, he shifted his focus to applied mathematics in operations research. Among his mathematical achievements were founding contributions to the field of integer programming, an active area of research to this day. He was Higgins lecturer and assistant professor at Princeton University, 1957-59. He joined the Research Division of IBM in 1959. In 1964 he was appointed IBM Fellow. In 1970, Gomory became Director of Research with line responsibility for IBM's Research Division. During his tenure IBM researchers made major contributions to the understanding of memory devices (Dennard Scalling), made major advances possible in high-density storage devices and produced advanced silicon processing methods. They also invented the relational database (Codd) and the RISC computer architecture. His researchers also won two successive Nobel Prizes in Physics and it was at IBM Research that Benoit Mandelbrot created the now widely accepted concept of Fractals. He continued in a leadership role for the next 20 years eventually becoming IBM Senior Vice President for Science and Technology.
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