Abraham Charnes

Abraham Charnes (September 4, 1917 – December 19, 1992) was an American mathematician who worked in the area of operations research. Charnes published more than 200 research articles and seven books, including An Introduction to Linear Programming. His works influenced the development of Data envelopment analysis (DEA) method. In his 1953 article with William W. Cooper he developed the chance constrained programming method for solving optimization problems in the presence of uncertainty.

Charnes received his bachelor's degree in 1938, master's degree in 1939, and PhD degree (with the thesis Wing-Body Interaction in Linear Supersonic Flow) in 1947 from the University of Illinois. Charnes taught at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, Purdue University, Northwestern University, and at the University of Texas at Austin since 1968.