The accepted lore is that Operational Research traces its roots back to the First and Second World Wars, when scientific research was used to improve military operations. In this essay we provide a different perspective on the origins of Operational Research by arguing that these are deeply intertwined with the impressive technological advances in Western Europe between the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries.
@article{arxiv.1703.03005,
title = {La Nova Scientia: Rewriting the History of Operational Research},
author = {Roberto Rossi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1703.03005},
year = {2017}
}