Richard C Larson
Richard C Larson
Professor (Retired) | Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Dr. Larson has built a distinguished career in operations research, systems analysis, and management science, with a particular focus on public-sector and urban challenges. He earned his PhD in Operations Research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1969 and subsequently spent more than five decades at MIT, serving as a professor from 1969 to 2019 and continuing as a professor post tenure since 2019. His career also includes approximately 40 years managing an independent consulting firm, Queues Enforth Development, Inc., which later became 22nd Century Technologies.
Early in his career, Dr. Larson was uncertain about his professional direction, but he ultimately chose operations research because of the broad range of opportunities it offered. Encouraged by his mentor, Professor Al Drake, he attended MIT and remained there for an impressive 54 years. Throughout his career, he has applied mathematical modeling and systems analysis to complex public-sector problems, particularly in urban environments. He also served as a consultant to the New York City RAND Institute and worked extensively on projects involving cities and public services.
Among Dr. Larson’s most notable accomplishments is his development of the Hypercube Queueing Model, a mathematically rigorous model that he programmed in the C language. He developed a compression technique that allowed the model to be processed relatively quickly. His doctoral research also led to the publication of Urban Police Patrol Analysis, which earned the Lanchester Prize for the best publication in operations research. He later co-authored Urban Operations Research with MIT Professor Amedeo Odoni, a textbook that has been translated into multiple languages and cited extensively.
Beyond academia and consulting, Dr. Larson has served as president of both the Operations Research Society of America and the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and has received recognition including the Marquis Who’s Who Top Educator honor and the 2025 Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award. He is also the author of Model Thinking for Everyday Life, published by INFORMS in 2023, through which he hopes to make model-based thinking accessible to a broader audience.
Dr. Larson attributes his success to his energy, faith, and unwavering commitment to his pursuits. Looking ahead, he hopes to return to writing, expand the reach of his work, and encourage the general public to embrace model-based thinking. His advice to aspiring professionals is to remain open-minded, avoid isolating oneself from others, welcome new information and perspectives, and recognize that personal experiences can provide valuable insight throughout one’s career. Outside of his professional pursuits, he enjoys walking through woods and fields with his Golden Retriever.
Press Release
Richard “Dick” Larson has been Inducted into the Prestigious Marquis Who’s Who Biographical Registry
LEXINGTON, MA, February 23, 2024 /24-7PressRelease/ — Richard “Dick” Larson has been included in Marquis Who’s Who. As in all Marquis Who’s Who biographical volumes, individuals profiled are selected on the basis of current reference value. Factors such as position, noteworthy accomplishments, visibility, and prominence in a field are all taken into account during the selection process.
Leveraging more than four decades of excellence in operations research (“OR”), Dr. Larson has earned distinction as a chaired professor with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Since 1969 until attaining post tenure status in 2019, he focused his efforts on undertaking OR research and applying it in practice, often jointly with his doctoral students, with emphasis on urban applications. He is best known for his development of the Hypercube Queueing Model, which stands out for its original rigorous mathematical foundation for an important class of spatially distributed queueing systems: emergency response systems (police, fire and emergency medical). He optimized the algorithm to ensure its efficiency, devising and programming a clever compression technique to enable relatively quick processing for a problem that grows exponentially with the number of responders. To facilitate implementation of his work in practice, he co-founded an off-campus applied research and consulting firm, called over the years by various names including ENFORTH Corporation and Q.E.D. https://qed.online
Jointly with MIT Prof. Dan Frey and with his (now deceased) wife (Mary Elizabeth Murray), Dr. Larson co-founded the MIT BLOSSOMS program https://blossoms.mit.edu. (BLOSSOMS = Blended Learning Open Source Science Or Math Studies) The set of BLOSSOMS video lessons is one of the first (perhaps THE first) widely distributed science and math-oriented Open Source Learning repositories ever created. All of these open-source educational videos are now available on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCR_HiQVSl8_KZ9ItuleTnpQ/featured
Outside of his primary career efforts, Dr. Larson served as the president of both the Operations Research Society of America (ORSA) and the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). He is also the author of “Urban Police Patrol Analysis” (1972), which earned him the Lanchester Prize for Best Publication in Operations Research, and he co-authored with Professor Amedeo Odoni the textbook “Urban Operations Research” (with 1,345 citations). Most recently (2023), he wrote “Model Thinking for Everyday Life,” published by INFORMS, aiming to encourage readers to learn how to think differently and become more effective in making decisions.
To prepare for his professional journey, Dr. Larson earned a Doctor of Philosophy in operations research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1969. Within the coming years, he intends to secure wide distribution of his book and potentially expand its reach beyond its present platform on Amazon. He will also continue his involvement as a proud member of the National Academy of Engineering, a highly respected organization.
Dr. Larson is the proud father to three adult children — Erik, Evan and Ingrid – and Grand-Dad to four young grandchildren.
