Richard William Porter

William Karush and the KKT Theorem Richard

This chapter is mainly about William Karush and his role in the Karush-KuhnTucker theorem of nonlinear programming. It tells the story of fundamental optimization results that he obtained in his master’s thesis: results that he neither published nor advertised and that were later independently rediscovered and published by Harold W. Kuhn and Albert W. Tucker. The principal result – which concer...

The shorthand publications of Sir William Richard Gowers.

OBJECTIVE To examine the shorthand publications of Sir William Richard Gowers. BACKGROUND Gowers developed an almost obsessional interest in Pitman shorthand. During the later part of his active career (1894-1910), the bulk of his professional writing, comprising nearly 100 articles, was printed entirely in Pitman shorthand in the Phonographic Record of Clinical Teaching and Medical Science. ...

Roy Porter

Strategy as Action: From Porter to Anti-Porter

In the post-crisis era new concepts are emerging, while some old and dysfunctional ones are being discarded. Strategy is about making series of decisions that drive corporate action under specific coupling with company’s environment and context. Because decisions are actions, so the strategy itself is action, not just a description of action. In the area of traditional strategy, descriptions (i...

A biosketch of William Richard Gowers with a new review of his inpatient case history notes.

William Richard Gowers (1845-1915) spent his career working at the National Hospital for the Relief and Cure for the Paralyzed and Epileptic at Queen Square, in London, United Kingdom, and at the nearby University College Hospital. His "Manual of the Diseases of the Nervous System" and many published lectures were based almost entirely on his own clinical observations meticulously recorded in s...