MIT Institute Professor Emeritus John D.C. Little '48, PhD '55, an inventive scholar whose work significantly influenced operations research and marketing, died on Sept. 27, at age 96. Having entered MIT as an undergraduate in 1945, he was part of the Institute community over a span of nearly 80 years and served as a faculty member at the MIT Sloan School of Management since 1962. Little's career was characterized by innovative computing work, an interdisciplinary and expansive research agenda, and research that was both theoretically robust and useful in practical terms for business managers. Little had a strong commitment to supporting and mentoring others at the Institute, and played a key role in helping shape the professional societies in his fields, such as the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). He may be best known for his formulation of 'Little's Law,' a concept applied in operations research that generalizes the dynamics of queuing....
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