John Bartholdi III, INFORMS Fellow, Manhattan Associates/Dabbiere Chair and Professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE) at Georgia Institute of Technology and co- executive director of the Georgia Tech Panama Logistics Innovation & Research Center, passed away October 30, 2019 at age 72. “John made numerous contributions to the OR/MS field and has been an inspiration for many of us,” said Pinar Keskinocak, INFORMS 2019 President-Elect and a professor in Georgia Tech’s ISyE department. “He was a master in developing elegant and yet easy-to-explain and simple-to-implement solutions to complex problems. For example, his work on self-organizing systems found applications ranging from warehouses to manufacturing to buses on campus! His impact in teaching, research and practice is far reaching. His passing is a big loss for our community and he will be missed very much.” Professor Bartholdi graduated in 1968 with a B.S. degree in mathematics from the University of Florida and then served two tours of duty during the Vietnam War as a paratrooper in a Naval Special Warfare unit. He returned to the University of Florida in 1977 to complete the Ph.D. program in operations research and later served on the faculties at the University of Michigan, Shanghai Institute of Mechanical Engineering and the National University of Singapore. Professor Bartholdi’s contributions to the field of O.R. were recognized very early in his career when he won the 1978 George Nicholson Student Paper Competition with his paper, “Cyclic Scheduling via Integer Programs with Circular Ones.” He was also named a “Presidential Young Investigator” by the National Science Foundation from 1984-1989. Professor Bartholdi was an active member of INFORMS for many years, and was named an INFORMS Fellow in 2005. In 2012, he was again recognized by INFORMS as the winner of the Transportation and Logistics Society Best Paper Award with his article, “A Self Coordinating Bus Route to Resist Bus Bunching.” Implementation of the ideas within this article won the 2014 Innovation Award from the Georgia Transit Association. ---------------------------------------------------------- John Bartholdi is a Professor in the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he holds the Manhattan Associates/Dabbiere Chair. He also serves as Co-Executive Director of the Georgia Tech Logistics Innovation and Research Center in Panama. Bartholdi’s research centers on problems of warehousing and distribution; but he also publishes on wider-ranging interests, including public transit, voting, geography, computer science, and biology. He is co-author of the book Warehouse & Distribution Science and he is a founder of the Wine Supply Chain Council. Bartholdi graduated in 1968 with a degree in mathematics from the University of Florida (Woodrow Wilson Fellow, Phi Beta Kappa, High Honors) and then served two deployments during the Viet Nam War in Beach Jumper Unit One of Naval Special Warfare. He returned to complete a Ph.D. in Operations Research, also at the University of Florida. In addition to his current position, he has served on the faculties of the University of Michigan, the Shanghai University for Science and Technology, and the National University of Singapore. He was named a Presidential Young Investigator by the National Science Foundation, 1984–1989; and his work has also been supported by, among others, the Defense Logistics Agency, the Office of Naval Research, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, IBM, Pratt & Whitney, Ford Motor Company, Genuine Parts Co., The Home Depot, Manhattan Associates, and RPS. He has given invited lectures at the National Security Agency and at Fermilab. Consulting clients have included John Deere, Yamaha, and the US Postal Service. He won the 1999 Award for Technical Innovation by the Institute of Industrial Engineers and in 2005 was named a Fellow of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science. In 2012 his paper with Don Eisenstein (University of Chicago) won the Best Paper Award from the Transportation and Logistics Society of INFORMS; and their implementation of the ideas therein won the 2014 Innovation Award from the Georgia Transit Association. In 2016 his on-line textbook won the Merlot Classic Award and two of his papers won the Test of Time Award from the Association for Computing Machinery. He also received the Golden Goose Award.