User:Yerevantsi/sandbox/Khachiyan

Leonid Khachiyan

Khachiyan's linear programming algorithm☆ 1980

Khachiyan's Algorithmus

In 1979, Khachiyan found an efficient way to solve programming problems that were thought to be intractable because they dealt with an often astronomically large number of options. His breakthrough dealt with the underlying mathematics to find the best of a finite but huge number of choices a computer can pursue. Applications today extend to a wide variety of areas, including telecommunications, economics, biology and agriculture.

So what did Khachiyan’s discovery of a new algorithm do to linear programming and combinatorial optimization? Personally, I feel his algorithm turned these subjects into more rigorous, more respectable, and more popular disciplines that they used to be. I think he also proved it was okay to have deviated from the norm. Khachiyan could be labeled a mathematician, a computer scientist, an operations researcher, an algorithmic mathematician, or perhaps all of the above, but it is really immaterial. There is no definitive definition of any of these subjects anyway.

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