10月12日，华人科学家，美国斯坦福大学终身教授叶荫宇博士在美国加州圣地亚哥举办的运筹管理协会年会(INFORMS Annual Meeting)上被授予冯·诺依曼理论奖，以表彰其在运筹管理学所作出的巨大贡献。此奖项创建于1975年，每年颁发一次，奖励给在运筹管理学领域做出奠基性的，有深远影响力贡献的一名科学家或一个研究群体。第一届得主是著名运筹学家，被称为线性规划之父的乔治·丹茨格(George Dantzig)。历届获奖者中不乏像约翰·纳什(John Nash)，肯尼斯·阿罗 (Kenneth Arrow)，哈伯特·西蒙(Herbert Simon)，,哈里·马克维茨(Harry Markowitz) 等诺贝尔经济学奖获得者，也有众多计算机科学，控制论等领域的创始人。

　　叶荫宇教授此次获奖也是华人第一次获得此奖项。叶荫宇教授1982年毕业于华中科技大学，1988年获得斯坦福大学运筹学博士，之后前往爱荷华大学任教。2002年回到斯坦福大学担任终身教授。叶荫宇教授是线性规划内点法理论的奠基人之一，并在数学规划的求解以及运筹管理学中的多方面应用都做出了大量重要的贡献。他被评为世界上著作成果被引用量最多的250名学者之一。叶荫宇教授的学术贡献在世界范围内被广泛认可。他是美国运筹管理协会颁发的Farkas Prize的第一任获奖者，也是美国运筹管理协会的荣誉会员(INFORMS FELLOW)，并且担任运筹管理学领域内诸多顶级刊物的编委。

　　叶荫宇教授非常关心运筹学在中国的发展。近些年中，叶荫宇教授每年都将一部分时间投入到国内大学的教学当中，分别在清华大学，华中科技大学，哈工大，中科院开办讲席班。叶荫宇教授在颁奖晚会上发表的致词中深情感谢了祖国，特别是在邓小平改革开放后，给予他机会赴美留学，并且以他自己曲折的人生经历作为例子，鼓励学生们不要惧怕困难，不管条件多么艰苦，只要有远大执著的理想和锲而不舍的精神，就一定能够获得成功。他的发言被报以持久的掌声。

以下是叶荫宇教授获奖时发表的演讲：

I am extremely honored and humbled to accept this award shared with my friend Yurii—I could not think of a better person to be the co-winner. I thank the prize committee, Gillermo, Kurt and Jim, for selecting us.

For me, it has been a long journey to this point, and I have so many people to thank, who helped me on the way and made me who I am today, standing at this podium.

At this very time 40 years ago, I was laboring at a rice field, sunrise to sunset, and fourteen hours a day doing hard physical work. I could not go to college after high-school, and was forced to relocate (with my parents) to a remote farm land. I saw no hope in my life… Although I wish he could have done more, I do thank Deng Xiaoping who opened the door of China, so that I had a chance to rise from the rice field, had a right to a college education ten later, and eventually had an opportunity to pursue a graduate degree at Stanford starting in 1982.

I’m deeply thankful to George Dantzig who taught me Linear Programming. He was a great advisor, and a remarkable person as well. On the night before he passed away the following day, my wife and I visited him at his bedside. He asked me how my research was going, and passed his best wishes for us. I also thank other faculty in the now MS&E department for their teaching and advising, such as David Luenberger, on the subject of Nonlinear Optimization.

My heartfelt thanks go to a group of fabulous colleagues who worked on Interior-Point Algorithms for LP and SDP: Todd, Anstreicher, Goldfarb, Nemirovskii, Nesterov, Renegar, Megiddo, Metrotra, Vavasis, and … I felt so lucky, at the beginning of my career, to associate with such a wonderful, unselfish, and supporting group in a very competitive research environment. Everyone was cheering for everyone else; it was like a family.

I am so grateful to Dick Cottle, Pete Veinott, Peter Glynn, Michael Saunders, Ben Van Roy, and Stephen Boyd, who brought me back to Stanford, where I learnt many new things and have had many talented students. Especially, Pete has been a mentor for me. His devotion and love for OR&MS set a role model for me to follow. I also thank the Boeing Company for picking me as a research partner.

Last, not least, I thank my beautiful wife, Daisun, who is with me today. I thank her for supporting my searching a dream education in the US, while she was alone taking care of our small daughter in China. I thank her for always encouraging me to move forward and to gain better results. One time I worked on an approximation algorithm for the Max-Bisection problem, and had a provable approximation rate 0.699. When I told her this result, she was not impressed. She said this number looked like a “supermarket number”: 6 dollar 99 cents, and asked me to make it to 0.7. I tried very hard but could not prove it. Later, somebody did use a stronger SDP relaxation to make the bound 0.701, which still stands for the best today. This prize is shared with you and our daughter… Thank you.