Harold Larnder And John Werner Abrams

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Harold Larnder

Operational research has lost one of its principal founders with the death of Harold Larnder on 22 July 1981. Born in England in 1902, and educated at Dal-housie University, he worked until 1935 as a radio 35S5 engineer on long distance communications between various parts of the British empire. When Sir Robert Watson-Watt assembled the team at Bawdsey Research Station which developed the first radars for the Royal Air Force, Harold joined as the specialist on high-powered transmitters. Once the technical problems of detection and location had been solved, formidable difficulties were encountered in the use of this information to bring about interception of approaching bombers by the Hurricanes and Spitfires of Fighter Command. As World War 11 drew closer, it became clear that the Air Defence of Great Britain would depend on the successful operation of the control and reporting system, and on the outbreak of hostilities Harold was posted to Fighter Command HQ to be responsible for the research necessary to make these operations efficient. The superintendent of Bawdsey, A.P. Rowe, had already transferred some of his scientists to Fighter Command, and given to the group the title “operational research.”

In May 1940, one of the crucial decisions of the war had to be made, when the French government requested the transfer of ten of Fighter Command’s squadrons to help stem the German advances. Winston Churchill was by temperament inclined to send aid to an ally in distress, but was persuaded by Air Marshal Dowding, aided by graphs prepared the night before by Harold Larnder, that the defence of the United Kingdom would demand the presence of every aircraft that could be made available. The subsequent Battle of Britain proved this to be absolutely true. At later stages of the war, Harold applied operational research to Coastal Command and to the Allied Expeditionary Air Force. In this last position he held the honorary rank of group captain in the Royal Air Force.

After the war Harold was awarded the OBE, and shared in the prize for the invention of radar.

Harold returned to Canada in 1951, and held a number of posts with the Defence Research Board. Those involving operational research were at Air Defence Command, St Hubert, the Canada-US Scientific Advisory Team in Washington (instrumental in the formation of NORAD), as director of systems evaluation in Air Force HQ, Ottawa, and as senior OR scientist in the OR Establishment in the Department of National Defence.

Harold was President of CORS in 1966. He retired from DRB in 1967, but continued to do consulting work in operational research for various government departments, in collaboration with his wife, the former Margaret Montgomery.

It is given to very few people to be associated with the beginnings of developments that grow during their own working lifetime to have important lasting worldwide application. Harold Larnder was closely involved with two such developments: radar and operational research, and made significant personal contributions to each.

John Werner Abrams

John Abrams, who died on 11 July, played a very active part in the recruiting and organization of operational research in Canada in the 1950s, and in its teaching in the 1960s.

He was a man of many interests, beginning his scientific career as an astronomer, and closing it as a scholar of the history and philosophy of science. He was a collector of books and of stamps, and an ardent traveller.

Having followed astronomy from the University of California to Harvard to Leiden to Tartu Observatory in Estonia, and the Lick Observatory, Dr Abrams, although an American citizen, joined the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1941 as an instructor in navigation. Later on he was posted to England, where tie worked in the operationat research section of Royat Air Force Coastat Command.

After the war, he taught at the University of Manitoba and at Wesleyan University and studied at the University of London, before joining the recently formed Operationat Research Group of the Canadian Defence Research Board. He served as superintendent of the Operationat Research Group from 1952 to 1954 and as chief from 1961 to 1962. Between these periods he was scientific adviser to the chief of the air staff and air defence consultant to the supreme attied commander, Europe, in Paris. Dr Abrams was vice president of CORS in 1958 and president in 1961–2.

Joining the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto in 1963, he became professor of Industrial Engineering and the History of Science in 1967, and atso director of the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology. He served in several capacities on the Humanities Research Council, for the Committee for International Cooperation on the History of Technology, and for the Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Science.

My own memories of John Abrams centre on his days with the Defence Research Board, where he built OR teams, arranged to have them supported with the necessary resources, and saw that their work was delivered to those who coutd put it into practical operation.