Abstract

Introduction As a coherent mathematical discipline, combinatorial optimization is relatively young. When studying the history of the field, one observes a number of independent lines of research, separately considering problems like optimum assignment, shortest spanning tree, transportation, and the traveling salesman problem. Only in the 1950's, when the unifying tool of linear and integer programming became available and the area of operations research got intensive attention, these problems were put into one framework, and relations between them were laid. Indeed, linear programming forms the hinge in the history of combinatorial optimization. Its initial conception by Kantorovich and Koopmans was motivated by combinatorial applications, in particular in transportation and transshipment. After the formulation of linear programming as generic problem, and the development in 1947 by Dantzig of the simplex method as a tool, one has tried to attack about all combinatorial opti

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