ORSA President, 1955
Leroy Brothers, a founding member of ORSA was the fourth President of ORSA. At the time of his presidency, he was chief of the Operations Analysis Division, in the Directorate of Operations, Office of the Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations.
His leadership of ORSA was marked by his emphasis on two key topics: understanding the major determinants of success in OR project work, and developing useful paradigms for O.R. education.
Roy Brothers' formal career in O.R. spanned 1943-1958, when he served as chief of operations analysis in the United States Air Force. During World War II, his operations analysis work dealt with targets and weapons for the war in the Far East, and with the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey in Japan. He then moved on to his civilian position as coordinator of strategic, tactical, and defense studies at Air Force headquarters in Washington, D.C. Throughout his time with the Air Force, he showed outstanding insights regarding the role of quantitative methods in national defense decision-making, and he was an exemplary leader of the interdisciplinary teams of civilian and career staff that were critically important in military problem-solving. His Air Force service as an operations analyst earned him a Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster. In 1958 he was further decorated for exceptional civilian service to the Air Force.
Before his active military service in the United States Army Air Force (1942-1946), Dr. Brothers was on the civil engineering faculty at the Drexel Institute of Technology in Philadelphia from 1927-1942. He returned to Drexel in fall, 1958 as dean of the School of Engineering and Science. At Drexel, he also served as vice-president for academic affairs and provost. He did not resume his involvement in O.R. before his academic retirement.
He was a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers and the 1963 Delaware Valley Engineer of the Year.
Roy Brothers died in 1985.
BS (civil engineering), 1925, DSc. (Hon.), North Carolina State University.