A few weeks ago, the field of Operations Management lost one its most famous and brightest stars when Marty Starr passed away at age 97 here in Winter Park, Florida.
I consider myself both lucky and privileged to have worked along side Marty for over a decade at Rollins College’s Crummer Graduate School of Business. This was late in his career. Marty held degrees from MIT and Columbia (PhD in 1953) and then spent 32 teaching at the latter. But when I went on sabbatical some 25 years ago, we needed to find a visiting prof to take over my operations courses for a semester. By the best of chances, Marty agreed to take a leave from NYC for a warm winter in Winter Park. He loved it here and never went back!
Rollins gave him the title Distinguished Professor of OM–and indeed was Marty distinguished. He had served as president of the Institute of Management Sciences (now called INFORMS) in 1974 and as president of the Production and Management Society (POMS) in 1995. He was also the longest serving editor-in-chief of Management Science (1967-1982). Both organizations elected him as a Fellow and POMS even created the annual Martin K. Starr Excellence Award in 2006.
Author of over 20 books and 100 research papers and consultant to the biggest names in industry, the world learned much from Marty’s new ideas about mass customization, modular production, and inventory control. What we learned at Rollins was that Marty was a great colleague and a fantastic teacher. He and his beloved wife, Polly, who passed away a few years ago, never missed a Crummer School or a POMS event or meeting. They were an inseparable team.
Marty is survived by his son Loren , daughter-in-law Gail, and grandson Michael. My wife and I are very happy that they live but 2 blocks away and were here to care for Marty these recent years,