George Dantzig
This last one is an obituary. He passed away earlier this month.
Slashdot has a brief entry with some links:
George Dantzig, the inventor of the Simplex method for solving Linear Programming problems, died on May 13. He was also the now-legendary student who turned in solutions for what he had taken to be a homework assignment, only to find out they had been posted as examples of what were suspected to be unsolvable problems.
The
Mercury News has a much better writeup covering some of his life.
Not exactly a household name but one of the absolute giants.
Posted by DaveH at May 22, 2005 9:42 PM