Robert Bixby

Robert Bixby ( born 14 September 1945) is an American mathematician whose specialty is linear and integer programming. He has become known ( since 2008 part of IBM), especially through his work on the problem of the traveling salesman and as a founder of the company CPLEX Optimization, distributes the software for mathematical optimization. With his work on the problem of the traveling salesman Bixby has contributed significant contributions to the advancement of cutting planes and branch-and -cut methods that are used today to some extent in solving other integer optimization problems by default.

Academic and entrepreneurial career

Bixby got 1968 Bachelor's degree in Industrial Engineering at the University of California. In the years 1971 and 1972 he received a Master or a PhD in the art Operations Research from Cornell University. After several years as a researcher and assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin- Madison, the University of Kentucky and Cornell University, he received in 1977 a professorship at Northwestern University. In 1983, he moved to Rice University, where he works today. In the meantime, he lived in Bonn, Berlin, Augsburg and at Northwestern University.

Robert Bixby initially worked only on theoretical aspects of Operations Research. In the early 1980s he began to deal with the numerical solution algorithms for linear programs and implemented a variant of the simplex method. Over time he improved the implementation and on and eventually brought in 1987, the first version of the commercial LP solver CPLEX out. From 1990 Bixby developed jointly with David Applegate, Vasek Chvátal, and William Cook the example of the problem of the traveling salesman new method for solving integer linear programs (among new cutting planes ), which today are standard in this area. With the new methods, they set several records for this problem size. These procedures have been incorporated in parallel in CPLEX, so that this program is now one of the best solvers for integer linear programs and is used both in research and in industry. In 2008 he founded together with Zonghao Gu and Edward Rothberg own company, Gurobi.

Bixby was until 2004 Vice - Chairman of the Mathematical Programming Society. In 2000 he was awarded the Beale - Orchard -Hayes Prize for his paper with this company Applegate, Chvátal and Cook ( see literature). In 2007 he received the Frederick W. Lanchester Prize - with Applegate, Chvatal and Cook for her book about the problem of the traveling salesman. In 2004 he was awarded the INFORMS Impact Prize.