Selmer Martin Johnson (21 May 1916 – 26 June 1996)[1] was an American mathematician, a researcher at the RAND Corporation.
World War II interrupted Johnson's mathematical studies: he enlisted in the United States Air Force, earning the rank of major.
After the war, Johnson returned to graduate study in mathematics at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, finishing his doctorate in 1950; his dissertation, on the subject of number theory, was supervised by David Bourgin, a student of George David Birkhoff.
[2][3][4] In the same year, he joined the RAND Corporation,[4] becoming part of what has been called "the most remarkable group of mathematicians working on optimization ever assembled".
[5][6] With George Dantzig and D. R. Fulkerson, Johnson pioneered the use of cutting-plane methods for integer linear programming in solving the travelling salesman problem.