Jay W. Forrester, an electrical engineer whose insights into both computing and organizations more than 60 years ago gave rise to a field of computer modeling that examines the behavior of things as specific as a corporation and as broad as global growth, died on Wednesday at his home in Concord, Mass. He was 98.
The cause was complications of prostate cancer, his son Nathan said.
Professor Forrester, who grew up on a Nebraska cattle ranch, was working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1950s when he developed the field of system dynamics modeling to help corporations understand the long-term impact of management policies.
R.I.P., Jay.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 19 2016, @03:11PM
I got to MIT in 1972, took one term off and graduated in 1977. I didn't cheat in high school, just made the top 10% of my class on grades, SATs were 790 math and 640 verbal. I had an unusual (for MIT applicants) outside activity that attracted the admissions department--they told me this when I visited MIT during the fall of my high school senior year. I was nervous about applying at all (since wasn't top 1% in my class), but the admissions guy asked me to apply early admission (early decision).
I had looked inside a toilet and I'm pretty sure I had a clue, before I got to MIT, but obviously wasn't in Forester's class...