George S. Fishman (left) and Robert G. Sargent

George S. Fishman, professor emeritus of operations research in The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, received the 2004 Lifetime Professional Achievement Award from the INFORMS Simulation Society. The award was presented at the opening session of the 2004 Winter Simulation Conference, which was held in Washington, D.C., on December 6, 2004. The award selection committee for 2004 was chaired by Robert G. Sargent (Syracuse University), with members Thomas J. Schriber (University of Michigan) and Lee W. Schruben (University of California, Berkeley).

The highest honor of the INFORMS Simulation Society, the Lifetime Professional Achievement Award is given at most annually to recognize an individual for major contributions to the field of simulation that are sustained over most of a professional career, with the critical consideration being the total impact of those contributions on computer simulation. An individual’s achievements may fall in one or more of the following categories:

1. contributions to research,
2. contributions to practice,
3. dissemination of knowledge,
4. development of software or hardware,
5. service to the profession, and
6. advancement of the status or visibility of the field.

The period of professional accomplishment for a recipient should normally be at least twenty years.

George Fishman is one of the pioneers in the field of discrete-event stochastic simulation, having inaugurated the use of rigorous approaches to the development of statistical methods for simulation during the 1960s while he was working at the Rand Corporation and simultaneously earning his Ph.D. degree in biostatistics from the University of California at Los Angeles. (He received a master’s degree in economics from Stanford University in 1963 and a bachelor’s degree in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1960.) After receiving his Ph.D. in 1970, George served on the faculty of Yale University for four years; and in 1974 he joined the faculty of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he has spent the rest of his professional career.

George Fishman has made numerous major contributions to simulation research over the past five decades; and in the process he performed a key role not only in shaping the research agenda for the field of simulation but also in setting the standards for high-quality research in the field. In the area of simulation output analysis, George pioneered the use of spectral analysis and the autoregressive method; he cointroduced the regenerative method; he performed groundbreaking analysis of the method of batch means; and he formulated new algorithms for batch means and implemented those procedures in software for large-scale practical applications. In the area of random-number generation, George performed comprehensive empirical analyses of random-number generators; and he introduced new performance measures for evaluating the behavior of those generators. This research stimulated the development of substantially better random-number generators for practical applications. George also made significant contributions to the allied area of (nonuniform) random-variate generation.

Another major focus of George’s research is computational and statistical efficiency in simulation. He introduced new methods for efficiency improvement and variance reduction in the design, execution, and analysis of computer simulation experiments. George has developed several methods for efficient simulation and performance evaluation of stochastic networks, Markov chains, and other probabilistic models that commonly arise in operations research.

George has written six books. Two of these books deserve special comment. His 1973 book, Concepts and Methods in Discrete Event Digital Simulation, was one of the first comprehensive books on all aspects of simulation, providing thorough coverage of such topics as the modeling of systems, developing simulation programs, and analyzing simulation output. His 1996 book, Monte Carlo: Concepts, Algorithms, and Applications, received the 1996 Frederick W. Lanchester Prize from INFORMS as well as the 1997 Outstanding Simulation Publication Award from the INFORMS College on Simulation.

George has disseminated knowledge about simulation well beyond the seventy-plus research articles and the six books that he has written. Over the past five decades, he has presented numerous papers at professional conferences and has given seminars at universities around the world. George has also written several papers on the applications of simulation in a broad diversity of disciplines.

George has performed substantial service to the field of simulation, and for this he received the 1990 Distinguished Service Award from the INFORMS College on Simulation. He served as president of TIMS College on Simulation and Gaming (now the INFORMS Simulation Society) from 1972 to 1974. George served as the first editor of the Simulation Department of Management Science during the period 1978–1987. As the Simulation Department Editor of Management Science, George exercised a decisive influence in establishing the standards for archival research publications in simulation—a highly controversial topic in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He served on the Board of Directors of the Winter Simulation Conference (1978–1980) and on the Editorial Advisory Board of ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation (1989–1992). He has also served on numerous committees of professional societies and international conferences. George Fishman’s contributions to the field of simulation in leadership and service have substantially advanced the field over the past forty-plus years, especially during the 1970s.

George has also been a leader in operations research education. He exerted remarkable leadership in advancing Operations Research at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, including helping to establish the Department of Operations Research and serving as chair of that department for a decade. George served as the adviser to numerous master’s and doctoral students, and he served on the advisory committees of many more master’s and doctoral students.

In summary, George S. Fishman has made exceptional contributions to the field of discrete-event simulation through his research, dissemination of knowledge, leadership, and service. Several letters of endorsement from distinguished individuals accompanied George’s nomination for the Lifetime Professional Achievement Award. Two themes running through all these letters are that George has had an amazing amount of productivity and that he is a world-class scholar, researcher, and leader in the field of simulation and in the larger fields of operations research and the management sciences. George Fishman’s career epitomizes the highest ideals of the Lifetime Professional Achievement Award of the INFORMS Simulation Society.

Lifetime Professional Achievement Award Winners