Alison Harcourt

Alison Grant Harcourt (; born 24 November 1929) is an Australian mathematician and statistician most well-known for co-defining the branch and bound algorithm along with Ailsa Land whilst carrying out research at the London School of Economics. She was also part of the team which developed a poverty line as part of the Henderson Inquiry into poverty in Australia and helped to introduce the double randomisation method of ordering candidates used in Australian elections.

Early life and education Harcourt was born Alison Doig in Colac, Victoria, in 1929. Her father was Keith Doig, a physician and Australian rules footballer who received the Military Cross during World War I. Her mother, Louie Grant, was of Scottish descent and was sister to physicist Sir Kerr Grant.

She was schooled at Colac West State School, Colac High School and Fintona Girls' School. The algorithm is the backbone idea behind all modern Integer programming solvers such as Gurobi, Cplex. and "Wavefunctions for 4-electron 3-centre bonding" —with her husband, the chemist Richard Harcourt. Harcourt and Clark published a paper about their analysis and recommendations for the Australian & New Zealand Journal of Statistics in 1991.

Harcourt retired as an academic from the University of Melbourne in 1994, but continued to work there as a sessional tutor in statistics. She pointed out in an interview that she had "tutored or lectured in every decade from the 1940s to the 2010s". In early December 2018, the University of Melbourne awarded Harcourt with an honorary Doctor of Science degree.

In June 2019, Harcourt was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in recognition of her "distinguished service to mathematics and computer science through pioneering research and development of integer linear programming".