Steven Vajda

Steven Vajda (20 August 1901 – 10 December 1995) was a Hungarian-British mathematician who contributed to the development of mathematical programming and operational research. He was a member of a circle of researchers that included George Dantzig, Abraham Charnes, W.W. Cooper, William Orchard-Hays, Martin Beale and others. He worked and taught as an actuary and as a mathematician in operational research from 1925 to 1995.

From 1939 until his death in 1995, he lived in the U.K. where he was a defence scientist with the Royal Naval Scientific Service, and a professor at Birmingham and Sussex Universities. He was a Companion of the Operational Research Society, a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and a member of the Mathematical Association.

He is the author or coauthor of at least a dozen books on mathematical programming, game theory, manpower planning and statistics and of many journal publications and conference papers.

Early life Steven (originally István) Vajda was born in Budapest in 1901, to Josef and Aurelia Wollak. His family moved to Vienna in 1903, and it was in this city that Steven was raised and educated. He read mathematics and received a Dr. Phil. Degree in 1925 from the University of Vienna. He stayed until 1973, when, at the behest of Professor Pat Rivett, he once again "retired" in order to become Visiting Professor of Mathematics at Sussex University. He remained an active member of the Sussex staff until he died in 1995 in Brighton, two years after the birth of his first great grandchild Alexandra Eva (named after his wife).

Works Theory of Games and Linear Programming (1956) Readings in Linear Programming (1958) Introduction to Linear Programming and the Theory of Games (1960) Mathematical Programming (1961) Mathematics of Experimental Design (1970) Probabilistic Programming (1972) Theory of Linear and Nonlinear Programming (1974) Mathematics of Manpower Planning (1978) Handbook of Applicable Mathematics: Supplement (1990), co-authored with Walter Ledermann, Emlyn Lloyd and Carol Alexander Mathematical Games and How to Play Them (1992) A Mathematical Kaleidoscope: Applications in Industry, Business and Science (1995), co-authored with by Brian Conolly Fibonacci and Lucas Numbers, and the Golden Section: Theory and Applications (2008)