Richard James Duffin (1909 – October 29, 1996) was an American physicist, known for his contributions to electrical transmission theory and to the development of geometric programming and other areas within operations research.
[1] He stayed at Illinois for his PhD, which was advised by Harold Mott-Smith and David Bourgin, producing a thesis entitled Galvanomagnetic and Thermomagnetic Phenomena (1935).
[2] Duffin lectured at Purdue University and Illinois before joining the Carnegie Institute in Washington, D.C. during World War II.
[4] In 1941, Duffin and A. C. Schaeffer put forward[5] a conjecture in metric diophantine approximation which was resolved in 2020 by James Maynard and Dimitris Koukoulopoulos.
Impressed with its innovations, a reviewer wrote, "common sense, ingenuity and originality in applying first principles are still competitive with other creative forms of the intellect.