Mathematician:Richard Ernest Bellman

Mathematician

American applied mathematician, who introduced dynamic programming in 1953, and important contributions in other fields of mathematics.

Nationality

American

History

• Born: 26 August 1920 in Brooklyn, New York City, USA
• Died: 19 March 1984 in Los Angeles, California, USA

Theorems and Definitions

• Bellman Equation
• Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman Equation (with William Rowan Hamilton and Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi)
• Bellman-Ford-Moore Algorithm (with Lester Randolph Ford Jr. and Edward Forrest Moore)

Results named for Richard Ernest Bellman can be found here.

Definitions of concepts named for Richard Ernest Bellman can be found here.

Publications

• 1949: A Survey of the Theory of the Boundedness, Stability, and Asymptotic Behavior of Solutions of Linear and Nonlinear Differential and Difference Equations
• 1954: A Survey of the Mathematical Theory of Time-Lag, Retarded Control, and Hereditary Processes
• 1954: Dynamic Programming of Continuous Processes
• 1957: Dynamic Programming
• 1958: Some Aspects of the Mathematical Theory of Control Processes
• 1959: Asymptotic Behavior of Solutions of Differential Equations
• 1960: Introduction to Matrix Analysis
• 1961: A Brief Introduction to Theta Functions
• 1961: An Introduction to Inequalities
• 1961: Adaptive Control Processes: A Guided Tour
• 1961: Inequalities
• 1962: Applied Dynamic Programming
• 1963: Differential-difference equations
• 1964: Perturbation Techniques in Mathematics, Physics, and Engineering
• 1965: Dynamic Programming and Modern Control Theory
• 1967: Introduction to the Mathematical Theory of Control Processes
• 1970: Algorithms, Graphs and Computers
• 1972: Dynamic Programming and Partial Differential Equations
• 1982: Mathematical Aspects of Scheduling and Applications
• 1983: Mathematical Methods in Medicine
• 1984: Partial Differential Equations
• 1984: Eye of the Hurricane: An Autobiography

Notable Quotes

If you can solve it, it is an exercise; otherwise it's a research problem.

-- Apocryphal: quoted in 1997: Donald E. Knuth: The Art of Computer Programming: Volume 1: Fundamental Algorithms (3rd ed.): Notes on the Exercises

Sources

• John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson: "Richard Ernest Bellman": MacTutor History of Mathematics archive

• 1997: Donald E. Knuth: The Art of Computer Programming: Volume 1: Fundamental Algorithms (3rd ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): Notes on the Exercises