Alison Doig

Alison Doig, who later became known as Alison Harcourt, is an Australian mathematician and statistician born in Colac, Victoria, on 24 November 1929. She studied arts and science at the University of Melbourne and developed a technique for integer linear programming. While working at the London School of Economics around 1960 she and Ailsa Land published a landmark paper in Econometrica describing the branch and bound method for solving discrete programming problems, an idea that underlies modern integer programming solvers. Back in Melbourne from 1963 she lectured in statistics, helped develop the Henderson Poverty Line in the early 1970s, and with Malcolm Clark showed why Senate ballot ordering needed the double randomisation method that later entered Australian electoral law. She was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2019.