Frederick S. Hillier was born and raised in Aberdeen, Washington, where he was an award
winner in statewide high school contests in essay writing, mathematics, debate, and music. As an undergraduate at Stanford University he ranked first in his engineering class of
over 300 students. He also won the McKinsey Prize for technical writing, won the Outstanding Sophomore Debater award, played in the Stanford Woodwind Quintet, and won
the Hamilton Award for combining excellence in engineering with notable achievements
in the humanities and social sciences. Upon his graduation with a B.S. degree in Industrial
Engineering, he was awarded three national fellowships (National Science Foundation, Tau
Beta Pi, and Danforth) for graduate study at Stanford with specialization in operations research. After receiving his Ph.D. degree, he joined the faculty of Stanford University, and
also received visiting appointments at Cornell University, Carnegie-Mellon University, the
Technical University of Denmark, the University of Canterbury (New Zealand), and the
University of Cambridge (England). After 35 years on the Stanford faculty, he took early
retirement from his faculty responsibilities in 1996 in order to focus full time on textbook
writing, and so now is Professor Emeritus of Operations Research at Stanford.
Dr. Hillier’s research has extended into a variety of areas, including integer programming, queueing theory and its application, statistical quality control, and the application of
operations research to the design of production systems and to capital budgeting. He has published widely, and his seminal papers have been selected for republication in books of selected readings at least ten times. He was the first-prize winner of a research contest on “Capital Budgeting of Interrelated Projects” sponsored by The Institute of Management Sciences
(TIMS) and the U.S. Office of Naval Research. He and Dr. Lieberman also received the honorable mention award for the 1995 Lanchester Prize (best English-language publication of
any kind in the field of operations research), which was awarded by the Institute of Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) for the 6th edition of this book.
Dr. Hillier has held many leadership positions with the professional societies in his
field. For example, he has served as Treasurer of the Operations Research Society of America (ORSA), Vice President for Meetings of TIMS, Co-General Chairman of the 1989 TIMS
International Meeting in Osaka, Japan, Chair of the TIMS Publications Committee, Chair
of the ORSA Search Committee for Editor of Operations Research, Chair of the ORSA
Resources Planning Committee, Chair of the ORSA/TIMS Combined Meetings Committee, and Chair of the John von Neumann Theory Prize Selection Committee for INFORMS.