Yup. Unless Richard Bellman was a time lord, the dates just don’t match up. Bellman published “dynamic programming” algorithms months before “Engine Charlie” became Secretary of Defense. My theory is that it’s a riff on Charles Atlas’s “dynamic tension”.
I don't really mean the names were terrible when people came up with them, just that they are terrible now. I am not sure whether LPs and DPs predate computers: do you consider the work of Dantzig and Bellman to be origins of the two, or do you go earlier?
Yes, Dantzig and Bellman were the originators. Dantzig has some amazing stories of jury-rigging primitive computers together in order to solve LPs. He then used his purse as an Air Force Program manager to fund the first programmable computer the SEAC.
Looking forward to your book. Here's a Bellman quote from Stuart Dreyfus's 2002 article entitled "Richard Bellman on the Birth of Dynamic Programming":
Comments
See here:
https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/pdf/10.1287/opre.50.1.48.17791