I first became aware of the name of BHP Rivett early in 1954, when I was a Cambridge postgraduate student. A book entitled Statistics for Technologists had been published the previous year and I found it contained a good, succinct account of probit analysis as an example of the principle of maximum likelihood. The book was written jointly with CG Paradine of Battersea Polytechnic, where Pat lectured two nights each week from 1947 to 1950; the extra money enabled him to marry into a South Wales mining family. Then in mid-1954, I met Patrick Rivett across an interview table in Hobart House, the National Coal Board's headquarters, for Pat was the Head of the Field Investigation Group (FIG), its having been decided that any title including the word research would go down badly at the coalface. At the time, a major study of underground communications, in response to the Crosswell Colliery disaster when 80 miners perished (including incidentally the father of my wife's closest school friend), was nearing completion. This was the first ever major practical study to use simulation, so that having to confess at the interview that I knew nothing about Monte Carlo methods was unsurprising.
It was while working on armaments research at the Ordnance board in 1951 that Pat had seen an advertisement for the headship of FIG Being unsure what operational research (OR) was Pat asked his boss, who said that it was the same as statistics but better paid. To Pat's surprise, he got the job to lead the group, then of seven people, who were applying a mixture of common sense and elementary mathematics to production problems. His enthusiasm was inspirational and he had little difficulty in convincing senior managers right across the Board of the benefits of the work. Thus when Pat left, FIG had grown in size to 80, working on a wide range of problems. Very significantly, he had first gone to the USA in 1953 and realized how much the UK lagged behind the USA in theoretical developments. In those days, members of FIG worked two Saturday mornings each month and one was always devoted to a seminar, as Pat sought to improve the technical content of the Group's work. I remember well, being introduced in 1955 to linear programming and the simplex method by the late Steve Cook, who was deputy head of FIG and had been dispatched to the States to build on Pat's visit. It is ironic that Pat should have started in the UK the avalanche of mathematics, which was to engulf OR in a way that he stridently criticised in later years.
The year 1953 was also significant in the life of Patrick Rivett, because the OR Club decided to open its membership and become a Society. Until then, the Club had a rule that there should be no more than one person from any organization. The NCB was represented by Donald Hicks, the Director of Scientific Control and Pat's boss. Donald volunteered Pat's service as the society's secretary, a role he undertook until 1961; Pat was always delighted by the idea that as a consequence, he was the only Operational Research Society (ORS) member never to have applied to join either the Club or the Society. Pat threw himself into this supposedly part-time job with all the frenetic energy which characterized everything he did. Not only were there weighty matters like a constitution to be drawn-up, but Pat became the target for everyone who wished to know about OR. The interest was immense and he toured the country speaking to meetings, large and small, on what is OR. In those days, the first question in the discussion was ‘What is the difference between OR and Work Study?’ If an organization wanted to start operational research, Pat was consulted. He was a quite brilliant communicator with a great feel for the use of words!
The first international conference on OR was held in 1957 in Oxford. This followed an approach from ORSA and TIMS to the British, and the French joined in. Sir Charles Goodeve chaired the conference committee and Patrick Rivett did the hard work as conference secretary. On the night of the conference, there was a dinner for the various nationalities and thus was IFORS born. The conference demonstrated vividly to Pat that the UK was falling further behind the US in developing relevant theory. Hence, he went to the Case Institute of Technology for 6 months, to work with the likes of Russell Ackoff, Leonard Arnoff and West Churchman. This visit was to have a profound effect on Pat's views of OR and on his own future.
The year 1960 was a watershed for Patrick Rivett, because he left the Coal Board. Rationalizing why anyone changes jobs is difficult in retrospect, even for the person making the change. The time spent at case had opened Pat's eyes to the limitations of carrying out OR in a one product industry. During the time in the States, he had become a good friend of David Hertz, then in charge of OR at Arthur Andersen in the USA. FIG was doing very well and Pat enjoyed the excitement of creating rather than running operations. Consultancy seemed to be the ideal way forward and Pat joined Arthur Anderson as it OR Manager for Europe.
The following year, Pat became President of the ORS and during the 2 year term, his insatiable quest for new initiatives led to the formation of both regional and study groups. However, he believed passionately that the technical content of UK OR would only be improved if the subject became an academic discipline, as had happened in the States. Interesting universities, therefore, became the main thrust of Pat's presidency. Also during this period, he wrote A Manager's Guide to Operational Research, jointly with Russell Ackoff. The purpose of the book was to enable the industrial executive to reduce the faith required to undertake OR in his organization. The preface also went on to say ‘equally, we hope that this book will appeal to the harassed OR worker who is called upon within his company to explain what it is he is doing’. At that time, I was managing a group, which included OR, in the UK subsidiary of an American food company and can vouch for the support that this invaluable prop provided. It became a source of continual reference and was the better for being concise.
It is remarkable that in the early 1960s, the Unilever Board would set aside a day, when two distinguished people would address it, one in the morning and the other in the afternoon. On one such occasion, the two speakers were Russell Ackoff and Charles Carter, then a professor of economics at Manchester University. Charles had originally been a mathematician and when he heard Russ speak, he realized both were addressing the same problems. Charles therefore arranged to spend a year with Ackoff in the States, but before that could happen, he was appointed to be the first vice chancellor of Lancaster University; the first two departments were economics and operational research. Inevitably, Ackoff recommended that Carter should approach Patrick Rivett to be the first professor of OR. Meanwhile, Pat had developed an antipathy to his highly paid consultancy lifestyle. He disliked being judged on the proportion of chargeable time sold, rather than on the quality of his ideas. Pat was, therefore, very pleased to accept Charles Carter's offer in 1963. Mike Simpson, who had also been in FIG, and I joined the Department the following year.
From 1964 to 1967, Lancaster was simply an incredible place to be, with both Pat and Mike on different occasions describing the period as the most stimulating in their lives. Lancaster was unashamedly modelled on Ackoff's ideas, with industrial practice by postgraduate students being of paramount importance. Clients were charged significant fees for these services, so that in the first academic year of 1964–1965, sufficient monies were raised to pay the salaries of newly recruited staff and to support entirely all the Masters’ students, no Research Council studentships being available. As well as generating this large consultancy income, Rivett, Simpson and Mercer gave virtually all the Masters’ lectures, some of which were thrown open to outside participants to increase the Department's revenue. None of the three had any lecture material to draw upon, so that course planning, preparation and delivery was one mad rush. In between, there were 1 week courses given by eminent lecturers from the US and the UK. Pat seemed to know everybody and nobody ever declined his invitation! It was wonderful to listen to Russ Ackoff, Abe Charnes, West Churchman, Bill Cooper, George Feeney, Dave Hertz from the States, Keith Tocher and Edward de Bono from Britain, and many others. We joked that Pat thought the bar of Midland Hotel in Morecambe was the staff common room! Yet he still found the time to write Concepts of Operational Research, which was designed to bridge the gulf between the layman and the OR scientist. That book, published in 1968, was quickly into chapters on ‘The Methodology of Model Building’ and ‘Formulation of Problems’, a topic to which he would return time and again as his experience grew. Yet another chapter was on ‘Human Problems’, which was his first recognition of what was to become soft OR.
Sussex University approached Pat Rivett in 1967 about a chair in OR. Pat had spent a lot of time travelling between Lancaster and London, so that returning south had its attractions. Sussex was longer established, so that its image in those days was more glamorous than Lancaster's. Consulting nobody and making what Pat himself subsequently described as a great mistake, he left Lancaster. However, Sussex University never funded OR adequately from his commercial activities, which it regarded as being too risky. The University appeared unsympathetic to OR and its industrial contacts. Divisions surfaced within the OR staff and the seeds of OR's self-destruction were sown. Pat was thoroughly miserable and appeared increasingly to plough a lone furrow. The Principles of Model Building was published in 1972. In that book, he sought to explore the stages by which decision models may be constructed and to subject the techniques to constructive criticism. A chapter on the influences on the decision-taker recognized human intervention and he wrote about the responsibility of the researcher. Pat had always believed that the object of OR was to improve a service to the community, as of right. Of equal significance was a chapter on decision and utility theory, which marked a flirtation with developing a usable theory of practice. This led to a paper ‘Policy Selection by Structural Mapping’, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society in 1977. That paper demonstrates that Rivett, the mathematician, could have enjoyed a highly successful academic career, but he was more concerned to find approximate solutions to exact problems rather than exact solutions to approximate problems. When his wife, Anne died in 1981, he was left with a young daughter, as well as two older children. Pat gradually disengaged himself from Sussex University and OR no long existed there.
Those of us who knew Pat Rivett intimately were saddened by what happened at Sussex, but not entirely surprised. Berwyn Hugh Patrick Rivett was born on 2 April 1923 at Oswestry, but the family moved to London when he was only 3 months old. An elder brother had obtained a place at King's College and it was felt that he should live at home. Their father was an ordained Baptist minister who became an NSPCC inspector covering an area which included the Old Kent Road. His father died when Pat was 10 and the family was poor, living in a vermin-infested slum house. Even so, Pat was sent to a grant maintained grammar school when he failed the 11 plus. In due course, he followed his brother to King's College and emerged in 1944 with a first in mathematics. Pat was immediately drafted into the Ministry of Supply, but still found time to obtain an MSc with distinction in pure mathematics from Birkbeck college. Coming from such a loving and caring christian family, Pat never saw ill will or deviousness in others. His rise to eminence had been effortless and he had received the unstinting support of senior colleagues like Donald Hicks and Charles Carter. Pat had never had to play corporate politics, nor did he have a liking for such manoeuvrings. He wrongly thought that if he treated Sussex University generously, then all would be well.
In 1989, shortly after his retirement, Pat and Mary married and they moved to a small village in north Cumbria, less than an hour's drive from Lancaster; Pat became an honorary professor in the University. His missionary zeal was undiminished and The Craft of Decision Modelling was published in 1994. The book contains many case studies and anecdotes to illustrate and illuminate nine principles. It is vintage Rivett! The closing thoughts epitomise Pat's view of OR; it is intellectually challenging, is useful and improves the human condition, and is enjoyable. The new found freedom enabled Pat to travel with Mary and he spent semesters lecturing at various universities in the States. These brought ever more friends, for Pat always enjoyed the company of others. Even when Mary was unwell, there was a never ending succession of visitors. However, Pat continued to research from his study at home, having turned his attention to family health care problems, about which he wrote several papers with medical practitioners in Rochdale. Pat was also in demand as a preacher at churches in Cumbria, for his faith had never deserted him.
It was during a conversation in 1998 that he told me that he hoped his recent research grant application would be unsuccessful. I remember thinking that at the age of 75, the restless spirit would like to slow down, but he wanted others to put on the brake. Pat also said that the previous 10 years had been the happiest of his life. Yet the Society will remember Patrick Rivett as it's first Secretary, President, Silver Medallist and Companion. However, my abiding memory will be of a fun loving friend, who was never happier than when watching a game of football. In the early days of Lancaster, we toured the North-west watching teams in the old first division. Our last game together was Carlisle versus the Sheffield Wednesday in the Cup; if only one of the teams had been his lifelong passion, Millwall!