The Branch and Bound Approach: A personal account

When I was a graduate student trying to do research in statistics at the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Calcutta (now called Kolkata) in the late 1950s, the subject “Operations Research” was unknown in India. If any one mentions “I am studying Operations Research” in India at that time, everyone around him/her would have said “what is that subject, we never heard of it before?” ISI used to attract many foreign visiting faculty in those days. Once a young American professor of mathematics visited, and the anouncement mentioned that he will give a series of lectures on the newly evolving subject “Operations Research”. He arrived with his young wife who was extraordinarily beautiful, but also very sociable and talkative. All male students like me at ISI used to gather around her whenever she appeared on campus. Curiosity about the new subject drew many students at ISI to his lectures. He discussed the beginnings of Operations Reaearch in the effort to optimize the costs of