Merrill Meeks Flood (1908 – 1991[1]) was an American mathematician, notable for developing, with Melvin Dresher, the basis of the game theoretical Prisoner's dilemma model of cooperation and conflict while being at RAND in 1950 (Albert W. Tucker gave the game its prison-sentence interpretation, and thus the name by which it is known today).
[4] Flood is considered a pioneer in the field of management science and operations research, who has been able to apply their techniques to problems on many levels of society.
[3] In the 1940s Flood publicized the name Traveling salesman problem (TSP) within the mathematical community at mass.
According to Flood "when I was struggling with the problem in connecting with a school-bus routing study in New Jersey".
[5] Even more important, as far as common usage goes, Flood himself claimed to have coined the term "software" in the late 1940s.