RAND Slideshow

Charles Hitch established the RAND Corporation's Economics Division and headed it for thirteen years. The Division included the Logistics Department for the development of advanced techniques of quantitative supply and maintenance analysis; the Cost Analysis Department; and the Economics Department.  He later became an Assistant Secretary of Defense and was President of the University of California at Berkeley.   Image courtesy of the RAND Archives. 

Lloyd Shapley worked at RAND for more than a quarter century.  He was a major figure in the development of Game Theory and shared the 2012 Nobel Prize with Alvin Roth.  He moved to the University of California at Los Angeles in 1981.  Photo courtesy of the RAND Archives. 

The original RAND building at 1700 Main Street in Santa Monica, California, was designed by H. Roy Kelly and constructed in 1952.  The building was demolished in 2007, following RAND's move to a new headquarters building constructed in the early 2000's.   Photo, by Julius Schulman, courtesy of the RAND Archives. 

John L. Kennedy, born in 1913, established the Systems Research Laboratory at RAND (which became the Systems Research Center) in the early 1950's.  The original mission of the laboratory was to study the effective operation of complex man-machine systems, which required an understanding of group rather than individual behavior.   From 1958 to 1966 Kennedy served as chair of the Psychology Department at Princeton, and later taught at California State University in Northridge CA.  He died in 1984.  Photo courtesy of the RAND Archives. 

Stephen Enke was an economist and demographer.   He joined RAND, wrote some its earliest memoranda, and was an founding member of the RAND Logistics Department.  After leaving RAND in 1958 he held positions at the Institute for Defense Analyses, the Center for Naval Analysis, the US Department of Defense, and several universities.  The birth father of U. S. Senator Max Baucus,  Stephen Enke died in 1978 at the age of 58.  Image courtesy of the RAND Archives. 

According to RAND's Michael Beltramo, David Novick is widely recognized for fathering two prominent children while at RAND - cost analysis and the Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System.  He was a RAND economist for more than 40 years, and headed RAND's Cost Analysis Department.   Image, taken in 1960, courtesy of the RAND Archives.  

A 1960 view of the RAND building at 1700 Main Street in Santa Monica.  Photo courtesy of the RAND Archives.  

Taking a break in the RAND courtyard in 1955.  Image courtesy of the RAND Archives. 

Based on a design by John von Neumann (then a RAND consultant) and built at  RAND in 1953,  the JOHNNIAC (shown here in 1955) was one of six "Princeton class" stored program machines.  Like the others in its class, it was "hand built, individually adapted, and had its own peculiarities" (Gruenberger 1968).   In 1955 William Orchard-Hayes and Leola Cutler implemented a linear programming package on the JOHNNIAC.  Image courtesy of the RAND Archives.   

RAND staffers compiling "program requirements" in the "Prom Room."  The blackboard shows what appears to be the format of a linear programming activity matrix.  Image courtesy of the RAND Archives. 

The RAND publications site lists more than 300 RAND documents written by Richard Bellman between 1948 and 1967.  In addition to papers on dynamic programming, they include papers on biological research, game theory, automation, and various problems in applied mathematics.  Bellman joined RAND in 1953 and left in 1965 to join the faculty at the University of Southern California.  Image courtesy of the RAND Archives.  

Robert Paulson flew 25 missions over Germany as a B17 navigator.  He retired from RAND after 30 years.  At RAND he worked on logistical problems for the US Air Force and Army, often using simulation models.  Robert Paulson died in 2009 at the age of 87.  Image courtesy of the RAND Archives. 

Herman Kahn became known to the public following his 1960 "On Thermonuclear War," which considered nuclear strategy as an application of game theory.  The book promoted deterrence, including the capability to launch a second strike, and the need for "Thinking About the Unthinkable," the title of his 1962 book.  By then he had left RAND to co-found the Hudson Institute.  Kahn, who died in 1983, was one model for Dr. Strangelove in the eponymous movie. Image courtesy of the RAND archives. 

RAND staffers gather for lunch on the patio.  Seated on the right is Herman Kahn.  Image courtesy of the RAND Archives. 

A RAND staffer (right) explains his work to RAND founder Frank Collbohm (left) and John D. Williams, author of "The Compleat Strategyst: Being a Primer of the Theory of Games and Strategy."  Williams, who headed RAND's Mathematics Division, died in 1964 at age 55.  Collbohm, who organized "Project RAND" at Douglas Aircraft and separated it in 1948 to become RAND Corporation, died in 1990 at age 83.  Image courtesy of the RAND Archives.  

At RAND in the 1950s and 1960s, Olaf Helmer, Norman Dalkey and others developed the Delphi method to establish consensus within a group.  Experiments on various aspects of the method were conducted at RAND; here Dalkey oversees one.  Early work on the method was published in Management Science.   Since independence and anonymity of opinion formation is at the method's core, participants are in separate cubicles, a contrast to group discussions around a table. Image courtesy of the RAND Archives.  

Charles Zwick joined RAND in 1956, two years after receiving his PhD in economics at Harvard, where he taught after earning his degree.  He became head of RAND's Logistics Department.  He conducted an early study in urban transportation, examined the impact of new technology and techniques on Air Force logistics, and led a team studying economic assistance programs in Vietnam, Thailand and Laos.  He later became Lyndon Johnson's Director of the Office of Management and Budget.  Image courtesy of the RAND Archives.   

RAND staffers playing blind chess on a break.  Players can see the position of only their own pieces, and an umpire tells them whether attempted moves are legal or not.  This chess variant is also known as Kriegspiel, based on a mode of tabletop war games developed by the Prussian army in the 19th century that were precursors for wargaming techniques developed and played at RAND and elsewhere.  Kriegsspiel is the German word for wargame.  Image courtesy of the RAND Archives.  

Bernard Brodie was a senior staff member at RAND from 1951 to 1966, one of several individuals who studied and wrote about nuclear strategy in the 1959 RAND classic, Strategy in the Missile Age.  He has been called "The American Clausewitz" and "the original nuclear strategist."   Image courtesy of the RAND Archives. 

Elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1968, Edward Barlow joined RAND in 1948 and rose to become vice president of the Engineering Division, specializing in air defense studies for the US Air Force. At RAND, he managed large, complex and influential studies that affected the design of US defense forces.  He left RAND in 1960 for a series of positions in missile defense and space science, retiring from Varian Associates in 1984.   Image courtesy of the RAND Archives. 

As Head of the RAND Mathematics Division, John Williams was featured in this advertisement.  

Leola Cutler learned computer programming on reportedly the first computer in Los Angeles, at UCLA.  She employed her programming skills to support the development of codes for linear programming and extensions on RAND's JOHNNIAC and other computers, and conducted experiments on their use. She worked for RAND for 37 years, beginning in the 1950's.  Leola Cutler died in 2015 at the age of 92.  Image courtesy of the RAND Archives. 

With Peter Kolesar, Warren Walker won the Lanchester Prize for their work at the New York City - RAND Institute, where he is seen in this 1975 image.  Walker and others at RAND, together with Dutch officials, were finalists for the 1984 Franz Edelman Award 1984 for work on cost-effective water management policies in the Netherlands, where he moved in 1992 to help establish RAND Europe.  In 1999 he moved to the Delft University of Technology, where he is now Emeritus.  In 1997 he received the INFORMS President's Award.  Image courtesy of Professor Walker.