William Wager Cooper (July 23, 1914 – June 20, 2012) was an American operations researcher, known as a father of management science and as "Mr.
[5] He grew up in Chicago, where his father (a former bookkeeper) owned several gasoline stations that closed in the Great Depression.
[1][2] At Chicago, he began studying physical chemistry but was inspired by his work for Kohler on a legal case to switch to economics,[1][2] graduating with a B.A.
There, he worked on performance auditing and the mathematical allocation of resources, and helped Kohler testify to a congressional investigative committee.
There, he formed important research collaborations with Abraham Charnes, George Leland Bach, and Herbert A. Simon, and eventually became University Professor.
[2] In 1969 he left GSIA but stayed at CMU, becoming dean of the new School of Urban and Public Affairs (now the Heinz College) there.
[1][5] In his 1959 article with Abraham Charnes he developed the chance constrained programming method for solving optimization problems in the presence of uncertainty.
[5] His most celebrated publication is a 1978 paper with Abraham Charnes and Edwardo L. Rhodes inventing data envelopment analysis.
[4] In 1986, he served as the American Accounting Association's Distinguished International Visiting Professor in Latin America.
[3][4] He is also in the Accounting Hall of Fame maintained by the Ohio State University's Max M. Fisher College of Business.