ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Frederick S. Hillier was born and raised in Aberdeen, Washington, where he was an
award winner in statewide high school contests in essay writing, mathematics, debate,
and music. As an undergraduate at Stanford University he ranked first in his engineer-
ing class of over 300 students. He also won the McKinsey Prize for technical writing,
won the Outstanding Sophomore Debater award, played in the Stanford Woodwind
Quintet, and won the Hamilton Award for combining excellence in engineering with no-
table achievements in the humanities and social sciences. Upon his graduation with a
B.S. degree in Industrial Engineering, he was awarded three national fellowships
(National Science Foundation, Tau Beta Pi, and Danforth) for graduate study at Stanford
with specialization in operations research. After receiving his PhD degree, he joined the
faculty of Stanford University, where he earned tenure at the age of 28 and the rank of
full professor at 32. He also received visiting appointments at Cornell University,
Carnegie-Mellon University, the Technical University of Denmark, the University of
Canterbury (New Zealand), and the University of Cambridge (England). After 35 years
on the Stanford faculty, he took early retirement from his faculty responsibilities in 1996
in order to focus full time on textbook writing, and now is Professor Emeritus of Oper-
ations Research at Stanford.
Dr. Hillier’s research has extended into a variety of areas, including integer program-
ming, queueing theory and its application, statistical quality control, and the application of
operations research to the design of production systems and to capital budgeting. He has
published widely, and his seminal papers have been selected for republication in books of
selected readings at least 10 times. He was the first-prize winner of a research contest on
“Capital Budgeting of Interrelated Projects” sponsored by The Institute of Management
Sciences (TIMS) and the U.S. Office of Naval Research. He and Dr. Lieberman also re-
ceived the honorable mention award for the 1995 Lanchester Prize (best English-language
publication of any kind in the field of operations research), which was awarded by the In-
stitute of Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) for the 6th edition
of this book. In addition, he was the recipient of the prestigious 2004 INFORMS Expository
Writing Award for the 8th edition of this book.
Dr. Hillier has held many leadership positions with the professional societies in his field.
For example, he has served as Treasurer of the Operations Research Society of America
(ORSA), Vice President for Meetings of TIMS, Co-General Chairman of the 1989 TIMS
International Meeting in Osaka, Japan, Chair of the TIMS Publications Committee,
Chair of the ORSA Search Committee for Editor of Operations Research, Chair of the
ORSA Resources Planning Committee, Chair of the ORSA/TIMS Combined Meetings
Committee, and Chair of the John von Neumann Theory Prize Selection Committee
for INFORMS. He continues to serve as the Series Editor for Springer’s International
Series in Operations Research and Management Science, a particularly prominent book
series that he founded in 1993.
In addition to Introduction to Operations Research and two companion volumes,
Introduction to Mathematical Programming (2nd ed., 1995) and Introduction to Sto-
chastic Models in Operations Research (1990), his books are The Evaluation of Risky
Interrelated Investments (North-Holland, 1969), Queueing Tables and Graphs (Elsevier
North-Holland, 1981, co-authored by O. S. Yu, with D. M. Avis, L. D. Fossett, F. D. Lo,
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