William W. Cooper

William Wager Cooper (July 23, 1914 – June 20, 2012) was an American operations researcher, known as a father of management science and as "Mr. Linear Programming".

Biography William Wager Cooper was born on July 23, 1914, in Birmingham, Alabama. William Cooper's wife Ruth helped draft the Institute's charter; ORSA and TIMS later merged in 1995 to form the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences.

Cooper was the founding editor-in-chief of the journal Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory.

He served as president of the Accounting Researchers International Association in 1986.

Research Cooper's research has been characterized both by its high volume and by the high diversity of its subjects, which fall into three major areas: economics, accounting, and management science and operations research. He also won the 1986 US Comptroller General Award for Significant Contributions to the US General Accounting Office and the Mehr Award of the American Risk and Insurance Association for his work on predicting insolvency.

In 1993, Cooper was honored by a festschrift on the occasion of his 75th birthday.

In 2006, Cooper was inducted into the hall of fame of the International Federation of Operational Research Societies.