John D. C. Little

John Dutton Conant Little passed away peacefully in the early morning of September 27, 2024, at age 96, a day after what would have been his wife, Elizabeth's, 98th birthday. John Little was an Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Professor of Management Science in the MIT Sloan School. He retired in 2017 after a distinguished career spanning seven decades, making fundamental contributions to queueing theory, traffic flow management, branch and bound optimization, decision support systems, operations research, and marketing science – fields he helped create. Along the way, he touched the lives of hundreds of faculty and staff, and thousands of graduate and undergraduate students from all over the world.
John was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and grew up in a then-rural part of Andover, Massachusetts. His parents were also natives of Massachusetts. John attended Andover's elementary and middle public schools and, for high school, he obtained a scholarship to Phillips Academy in Andover where he graduated in 1945. He started college at MIT that summer due to the wartime acceleration of MIT's academic program. He majored in physics and was the editor- in-chief of MIT's venerable Voo Doo magazine, "MIT's only intentionally humorous publication." He graduated in three years, receiving his SB degree in 1948. Tired of school and not yet wanting to enter the working world, John hitchhiked around the country, doing various odd jobs to support himself along the way. After ten months, he decided that a steady job seemed better than poverty, and joined the General Electric Company (GE) as an engineer.
It was at GE that he met his future wife, Wellesley College graduate Elizabeth Alden. In 1951, both he and Elizabeth were accepted at MIT as PhD students in the physics program. At MIT he gained access to Whirlwind I, the world's first real-time digital computer and one of the earliest digital computers of any type, writing a 4,000 line program in 1953 to model and optimize water use of a hydroelectric dam for his dissertation. His thesis was very likely the first non-defense application of dynamic programming to a problem of practical importance.
That year, John married Elizabeth, who was then working on her thesis related to ferroelectrics under Professor Arthur von Hippel. Elizabeth received her PhD from MIT in 1954 in physics, and John obtained his PhD from MIT in 1955 in physics and the emerging field of Operations Research where he was the first doctoral student.
In early 1955, three months after completing his thesis, John was drafted into the Army. He was stationed for two years at Ft. Monroe, Hampton, Virginia, where he served as an analyst working on operations research problems in tank strategy and tactics training. As an antidote to the Army, John and Elizabeth bought a small sailboat they named "Queequeg" and had a wonderful time getting in and out of trouble on Chesapeake Bay. Upon his discharge from the Army in 1957, he spent the following five years teaching at Case Institute of Technology (now Case Western Reserve University), becoming an Associate Professor of Operations Research.
In operations research, he is best known for Little's law, his generalized proof of the queuing formula, L = W, published in 1961. This widely applicable theorem states that the time-average number of, say, customers, in the queuing system (L), equals the average arrival rate of customers into the system multiplied by the average time that each customer spends waiting in the system (W).
John rejoined MIT in the Sloan School in 1962 as an Associate Professor of Operations Research and Management. He and Elizabeth moved with their young family into a permanent home in Lincoln, MA, raising three sons and a daughter in a now quintessentially mid-century modern house surrounded by nature and near a network of hiking trails.
Considered a pioneer of marketing science, John has published research on a broad set of modeling and decision support issues, including models of individual choice behavior, adaptive control of promotional spending, and marketing mix models for consumer packaged goods. In the early 1960s, having already worked with Whirlwind I, he introduced the use of computer models in marketing science. Not long after this, his young children began to hear the clacking sound of a home teletype, John's 1960s version of remote work. The machine generated a long yellow paper tape, marked with little holes, that made a computer program into a physical object – a process that created mountains of little punched dots.
In 1967, he co-founded Management Decision Systems, Inc. (MDS), a marketing models software company with clients such as Nabisco, Coca-Cola, and Ocean Spray. After the acquisition of MDS by Information Resources, Inc. (IRI) he was on the IRI board until 2003. He was an early adopter of the Internet when it burst on the scene, and was quickly attracted to e- commerce and co-taught the first course on the subject at MIT Sloan. He kept up with the latest technology, updating his computers and software often and using early online conferencing applications to collaborate with overseas colleagues.
John has been Director of the MIT Operations Research Center and, within the Sloan School, Head of the Management Science Area, and Head of the Behavioral and Policy Sciences Area. He was a past-president of both the Operations Research Society of America (ORSA) and the Institute of Management Sciences (TIMS) and, following their merger, became the first president of the succeeding society, INFORMS.
Among John's many honors, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1989, and he received the Parlin and Converse Awards of the American Marketing Association, the Kimball Medal of ORSA, and the Distinguished Service Medal of TIMS.
John traveled for work all over the world and jogged or biked everyday no matter where he was, rain or shine. He enjoyed gathering his own seafood, especially with family, be it fishing, clamming, musseling, hunting for whelks, or jigging for squid. In the mid-70s, he received his "master squid chef certificate" from the National Marine Fisheries Service. He famously invited Sloan students and faculty from overseas to his Thanksgiving dinners, which included a walk at the Old North Bridge in Concord beforehand and a square dance in Lincoln after. He kept working, and kept up with new technology, new discoveries, and new applications, including being able to summon an Uber for the trip to his office, into his early 90s.
John, predeceased by his wife Elizabeth and his two sisters, Margaret and Francis, leaves four children (Jack, Sarah, Thomas, and Ruel), eight grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.
The family is deeply grateful for the group of aides who provided continuous, expert, and loving care for John in the last stages of his life's journey.
A memorial service in celebration of John's life will be held on Saturday November 16, 2024 at 1 pm in First Parish, 4 Bedford Road, Lincoln, MA. A private graveside service for family will be held at Lincoln Cemetery.
In lieu of flowers...
John was a great supporter of women in science both in his professional community and within his own family. He encouraged, supported, advised, and helped facilitate their careers at every stage. He also was a great supporter of the arts, having long-running subscriptions to the Boston Symphony and the American Repertory Theater. He always bought tickets for four so that he and Elizabeth could invite friends, colleagues, and/or family to every show he attended. After Elizabeth passed away, he continued to buy his four tickets and fill his usual seats with a wide variety of enthusiastic guests.
We very much invite you to share a favorite memory with us on John's tribute wall, post a photo, a video, whatever you may feel moved to write or share, or simply "light a candle."
Cards and letters may be sent to The Little Family, c/o Dee Funeral Home, 27 Bedford Street, Concord, MA 01742.
...for those who wish to make a donation in memory of John and would like a suggested organization, we offer these:
Science Club for Girls, Cambridge, MA
https://give.scienceclubforgirls.org/campaign/609439/donate
American Repertory Theater (ART), Cambridge, MA - Annual Fund/Membership
https://ticket.americanrepertorytheater.org/donate/contribute2
Arrangements are entrusted to Dee Funeral Home & Cremation Service of Concord.