Russell L Ackoff (1919-2009)—"Co-author of the pioneering textbook on operations research and its practice that helped define the field; a life-long advocate of systems thinking and leading critic [since 1970] of the established mathematical paradigm in operational research", and Professor Emeritus of Management Science, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania—died on 29 October at the age of 90.

As Kirby and Rosenhead (2005) opined, the influence of his work in operations research, "on the early development of the discipline in the USA and in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s is hard to over-estimate". Ackoff opines that operations research, like typical scientific research, proceeds analytically—a simple process of taking apart the parts of a unit, understand the parts taken separately, and then try to assemble the understanding of the parts to understand the unit as a whole. It is used to find "the best decisions relative to as large a portion of total organizations as possible". Soon, it is, however, found that operational research is limited for several reasons: "most man-machine systems have physical, sociological, economic, and engineering aspects ...(t)hese phases of the system can best be understood by those trained in the appropriate fields", while in reality, as Ackoff felt, interdisciplinary approach to decision making, is missing. With the failure of OR models to incorporate "psychological and social variables", Ackoff expressed his strong uneasiness at them.