Prof. Pierre Hansen gave a lecture entitled “Applications of Mathematical Programming in Discovery Science” at AMSS on 1, July, 2016.

 Mathematical programming is a backbone of operations research and as such has led to the solution of multiple optimization problems in a variety of fields. When this research concerns pure or applied science, it is sometimes referred to as discovery science. Some results obtained in the last decades at GERAD will be presented and discussed. In the lecture, he answered the following questions: (i) Did George Boole invent probabilistic logic? (ii) Did he invent linear programming? (iii) Does the stability of fullerenes increase with the number of Kékulé structures? (iv) Can the Auto GraphiX system, developed at GERAD Montreal, generate over 1000 conjectures in graph theory?

 Prof. Pierre Hansen is the Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.