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Richard W. Conway

Richard W. Conway
Born(1931-12-12)December 12, 1931
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.
DiedMarch 19, 2024(2024-03-19) (aged 92)
EducationBME, Cornell (1954)
PhD, Cornell (1958)
Known for
SpouseEdythe Davies Conway[17]
Awards
Scientific career
Institutions
Thesis An Experimental Investigation of Scheduling for Single-Stage Production  (1958)
Doctoral students

Richard Walter Conway (December 12, 1931 – March 19, 2024) was an American industrial engineer and computer scientist who was the Emerson Electric Company Professor of Manufacturing Management, Emeritus in the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University.[18] Conway spent his entire academic career, both as a student and a professor, at Cornell and held faculty positions at Cornell in several different areas: industrial engineering, operations research, computer science, and management science.[19] He was especially known for his work and publications in foundational questions about computer simulation methodology; in writing about production scheduling theory; in developing computer languages and language compilers, including the widely used PL/C dialect of IBM's PL/I language; in authoring or co-authoring textbooks about computer programming; and in developing simulation software for manufacturing. He was also the first director of the Office of Computing Services at Cornell.

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  3. ^ a b Richard W. Conway at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
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  5. ^ The journal Management Science credits two papers by Conway (1959 and 1963) with founding the field of Stochastic simulation.[4]
  6. ^ Conway, Richard W.; Maxwell, William L.; Miller, Louis W. (2003). Theory of Scheduling. Dover Publications. ISBN 978-0-486-42817-8.
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  8. ^ Theory of Scheduling, coathored with William L. Maxwell and Louis W. Miller, was published by Addison-Wesley in 1967. It was republished by Dover Publications in 2003.[6] In 2002, INFORMS listed its publication as one of the great moments in OR history over the prior fifty years.[7]
  9. ^ In 1962, Conway developed the language CORC and a compiler for it. This was followed by CUPL in the late 1960s and PL/C in the early 1970s, which was adopted by over 250 universities. A key feature of the PL/C compiler was the ability to correct syntax errors and compile every program, important in those days because after submitting a program on punched cards, one could wait several hours to receive the results of its compilation and execution.
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  12. ^ Conway and Gries's 1973 text An Introduction to Programming: A Structured Approach Using PL/I and PL/C stressed the discipline of structured programming throughout, becoming one of the most prominent textbooks to do so.[10] It was also the first text to introduce considerations of program correctness, including loop invariants.[11] It led to a dozen or so textbooks modeled after it, all of which were oriented toward teaching programming but using a variety of different languages and dialects.
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  15. ^ In 1996, while Professor in the Cornell Johnson College of Business, Conway launched the first immersion program, titled "Semester in Manufacturing".[13] In the spring semester, students took one 15-credit course. It combined interactive visits to manufacturing facilities and worker's unions with lectures, discussions, and team-based projects. This worked so well that four years later, the Johnson College had four such immersion courses. Immersion courses are now a unique feature of the College.[14]
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  17. ^ Edythe was also a Cornell graduate, getting her BS (1954), MeD (1956), and PhD (1979) in Home Economics. She then joined the faculty and helped transform the department from Home Economics to Human Ecology. Edy was also co-owner and COO of their software business, CWAY Systems. Edy passed away on 1 April 2022.[16]
  18. ^ "Richard W. Conway". Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. Retrieved September 23, 2022.
  19. ^ Cite error: The named reference sargent-interview-maxwell-conway was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

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