A seminal contribution of Ailsa Land and Alison Doig Harcourt to the field of mathematical programming

Summary In 1960, Ailsa Land and Alison Doig published the first linear programming‐based branch‐and‐bound algorithm for the solution of mixed integer linear programs. This algorithm has had a major impact on the field of mathematical programming and remains to this day the only available solution methodology for generic mixed integer linear programs. This article recounts the genesis of this algorithm and describes some of the developments that have taken place since its publication.