50th Anniversary of Mathematics of Operations Research (and 50 papers, one for each year)

 MOR is a journal that published its first issue only two years after I finished my Ph.D., and Bob Aumann was the first editor of its Game Theory section. The 50 papers selected to mark its 50th anniversary, one for each year, are something of a history of operations research since 1976.

 The 1981 paper is Roger Myerson's famous paper on auctions.

I submitted my 1982 paper to MOR only after it was rejected by Chicago's Journal of Political Economy, with a letter from the editor, George Stigler, saying that the only economics in the paper was in the title. (He meant that market clearing in the model wasn't achieved by price adjustment.)  Matching markets have become a significant part of economics since then...

Editor’s Comments on the 50th Anniversary of Mathematics of Operations Research
Katya Scheinberg
Published Online:28 Jan 2026https://doi.org/10.1287/moor.2026.50th.v51.n1
 

"As we proudly celebrate the 50th anniversary of the journal Mathematics of Operations Research (MOR), we look back at its history and how it reflects the evolution of the field itself.

"The senior editors have prepared a list of 50 papers—one for each year—to represent this history. These papers are but a very small selection from an outstanding collection of contributions published by the journal over the past five decades. "

Augmented Lagrangians and Applications of the Proximal Point Algorithm in Convex Programming

RT Rockafellar

Mathematics of Operations Research 1976 1(2):97–116

New Finite Pivoting Rules for the Simplex Method

RG Bland

Mathematics of Operations Research 1977 2(2):103–107

Best Algorithms for Approximating the Maximum of a Submodular Set Function

GL Nemhauser, LA Wolsey

Mathematics of Operations Research 1978 3(3):177–188

Mathematical Properties of the Banzhaf Power Index

P Dubey, LS Shapley

Mathematics of Operations Research 1979 4(2):99–131

Some Useful Functions for Functional Limit Theorems

W Whitt

Mathematics of Operations Research 1980 5(1):67–85

Optimal Auction Design

RB Myerson

Mathematics of Operations Research 1981 6(1):58–73

The Economics of Matching: Stability and Incentives

AE Roth

Mathematics of Operations Research 1982 7(4):617–628

Integer Programming with a Fixed Number of Variables

HW Lenstra Jr

Mathematics of Operations Research 1983 8(4):538–548

Lipschitz Behavior of Solutions to Convex Minimization Problems

J-P Aubin

Mathematics of Operations Research 1984 9(1):87–111

Distributional Strategies for Games with Incomplete Information

PR Milgrom, RJ Weber

Mathematics of Operations Research 1985 10(4):619–632

Clique Tree Inequalities and the Symmetric Travelling Salesman Problem

M Grötschel, WR Pulleyblank

Mathematics of Operations Research 1986 11(4):537–569

Minkowski’s Convex Body Theorem and Integer Programming

R Kannan

Mathematics of Operations Research 1987 12(3):415–440

Cooling Schedules for Optimal Annealing

B Hajek

Mathematics of Operations Research 1988 13(2):311–329

Markov Chains with Rare Transitions and Simulated Annealing

JN Tsitsiklis

Mathematics of Operations Research 1989 14(1):70–90

Newton’s Method for B-Differentiable Equations

J-S Pang

Mathematics of Operations Research 1990 15(2):311–341

Scenarios and Policy Aggregation in Optimization Under Uncertainty

RT Rockafellar, RJ-B Wets

Mathematics of Operations Research 1991 16(1):119–147

The Generalized Basis Reduction Algorithm

L Lovász, HE Scarf

Mathematics of Operations Research 1992 17(3):751–764

On Adaptive-Step Primal-Dual Interior-Point Algorithms for Linear Programming

S Mizuno, MJ Todd, Y Ye

Mathematics of Operations Research 1993 18(4):964–981

A Polynomial Time Algorithm for Counting Integral Points in Polyhedra When the Dimension Is Fixed

AI Barvinok

Mathematics of Operations Research 1994 19(4):769–779

Fast Approximation Algorithms for Fractional Packing and Covering Problems

SA Plotkin, DB Shmoys, É Tardos

Mathematics of Operations Research 1995 20(2):257–301

Rounding of Polytopes in the Real Number Model of Computation

LG Khachiyan

Mathematics of Operations Research 1996 21(2):307–320

Self-Scaled Barriers and Interior-Point Methods for Convex Programming

YE Nesterov, MJ Todd

Mathematics of Operations Research 1997 22(1):1–42

Robust Convex Optimization

A Ben-Tal, A Nemirovski

Mathematics of Operations Research 1998 23(4):769–805

The Flatness Theorem for Nonsymmetric Convex Bodies via the Local Theory of Banach Spaces

W Banaszczyk, AE Litvak, A Pajor, SJ Szarek

Mathematics of Operations Research 1999 24(3):728–750

Mathematical Programs with Complementarity Constraints: Stationarity, Optimality, and Sensitivity

H Scheel, S Scholtes

Mathematics of Operations Research 2000 25(1):1–22

A Weak-to-Strong Convergence Principle for Fejér-Monotone Methods in Hilbert Spaces

HH Bauschke, PL Combettes

Mathematics of Operations Research 2001 26(2):248–264

The Complexity of Decentralized Control of Markov Decision Processes

DS Bernstein, R Givan, N Immerman, S Zilberstein

Mathematics of Operations Research 2002 27(4):819–840

A Comparison of the Sherali-Adams, Lovász-Schrijver, and Lasserre Relaxations for 0–1 Programming

M Laurent

Mathematics of Operations Research 2003 28(3):470–496

Selfish Routing in Capacitated Networks

JR Correa, AS Schulz, NE Stier-Moses

Mathematics of Operations Research 2004 29(4):961–976

Robust Dynamic Programming

GN Iyengar

Mathematics of Operations Research 2005 30(2):257–280

Integer Polynomial Optimization in Fixed Dimension

JA De Loera, R Hemmecke, M Köppe, R Weismantel

Mathematics of Operations Research 2006 31(1):147–153

Subsolutions of an Isaacs Equation and Efficient Schemes for Importance Sampling

P Dupuis, H Wang

Mathematics of Operations Research 2007 32(3):723–757

Facets of Two-Dimensional Infinite Group Problems

SS Dey, J-P Richard

Mathematics of Operations Research 2008 33(1):140–166

Minimal Valid Inequalities for Integer Constraints

V Borozan, G Cornuéjols

Mathematics of Operations Research 2009 34(3):538–546

Proximal Alternating Minimization and Projection Methods for Nonconvex Problems: An Approach Based on the Kurdyka-Łojasiewicz Inequality

H Attouch, J Bolte, P Redont, A Soubeyran

Mathematics of Operations Research 2010 35(2):438–457

The Simplex and Policy-Iteration Methods Are Strongly Polynomial for the Markov Decision Problem with a Fixed Discount Rate

Y Ye

Mathematics of Operations Research 2011 36(4):593–603

Online Stochastic Matching: Online Actions Based on Offline Statistics

VH Manshadi, S Oveis Gharan, A Saberi

Mathematics of Operations Research 2012 37(4):559–573

Robust Markov Decision Processes

W Wiesemann, D Kuhn, B Rustem

Mathematics of Operations Research 2013 38(1):153–183

Learning to Optimize via Posterior Sampling

D Russo, B Van Roy

Mathematics of Operations Research 2014 39(4):1221–1243

On the Convergence of Decomposition Methods for Multistage Stochastic Convex Programs

P Girardeau, V Leclere, AB Philpott

Mathematics of Operations Research 2015 40(1):130–145

Learning in Games via Reinforcement and Regularization

P Mertikopoulos, WH Sandholm

Mathematics of Operations Research 2016 41(4):1297–1324

A Descent Lemma Beyond Lipschitz Gradient Continuity: First-Order Methods Revisited and Applications

HH Bauschke, J Bolte, M Teboulle

Mathematics of Operations Research 2017 42(2):330–348

Error Bounds, Quadratic Growth, and Linear Convergence of Proximal Methods

D Drusvyatskiy, AS Lewis

Mathematics of Operations Research 2018 43(3):919–948

Quantifying Distributional Model Risk via Optimal Transport

J Blanchet, K Murthy

Mathematics of Operations Research 2019 44(2):565–600

Characterization, Robustness, and Aggregation of Signed Choquet Integrals

RD Wang, YR Wei, GE Willmot

Mathematics of Operations Research 2020 45(3):993–1015

Statistics of Robust Optimization: A Generalized Empirical Likelihood Approach

JC Duchi, PW Glynn, H Namkoong

Mathematics of Operations Research 2021 46(3):946–969

Entropy Regularization for Mean Field Games with Learning

X Guo, R Xu, T Zariphopoulou

Mathematics of Operations Research 2022 47(4):3239–3260

Distributionally Robust Stochastic Optimization with Wasserstein Distance

R Gao, A Kleywegt

Mathematics of Operations Research 2023 48(2):603–655

A Stochastic Sequential Quadratic Optimization Algorithm for Nonlinear-Equality-Constrained Optimization with Rank-Deficient Jacobians

AS Berahas, FE Curtis, MJ O’Neill, DP Robinson

Mathematics of Operations Research 2024 49(4):2212–2248

Stationary Points of a Shallow Neural Network with Quadratic Activations and the Global Optimality of the Gradient Descent Algorithm

D Gamarnik, EC Kizildag, I Zadik

Mathematics of Operations Research 2025 50(1):209–251

 

HT Itai Ashlagi