Frank Lauren Hitchcock (March 6, 1875 – May 31, 1957) was an American mathematician and physicist known for his formulation of the transportation problem in 1941.

Academic life

Frank did his preparatory study at Phillips Andover Academy. He entered Harvard University and completed his bachelor's degree in 1896. Then he began teaching, first in Paris and at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. From 1904 to 1906 he taught chemistry at North Dakota State University, Fargo. Hitchcock returned to Massachusetts and began to teach at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and study at the graduate level at Harvard. In 1910 he obtained a Ph.D. with a thesis entitled, Vector Functions of a Point. Hitchcock stayed at MIT until retirement, publishing his analysis of optimal distribution in 1941.

Personal life

Frank Hitchcock was descended from New England forebears. His mother was Susan Ida Porter (b. January 1, 1848, Middlebury, Vermont) and his father was Elisha Pike Hitchcock. His parents married on June 27, 1866. Frank was born March 6, 1875, in New York City. He had two sisters, Mary E. Hitchcock and Viola M. Hitchcock, and two brothers, George P. Hitchcock and Ernest Van Ness Hitchcock. Although Frank was born in New York City, he was raised in Pittsford, Vermont. Frank married Margaret Johnson Blakely (d. May 22, 1925) in Paris, France, on May 25, 1899. They had three children, Lauren Blakely (1900-1972), who became a chemical engineer and early opponent of air pollution, John Edward (b. January 28, 1906, d. July 26, 1909), and George Blakely, January 12, 1910. At the time of his death Frank had 11 grandchildren and 6 great-grandsons.

Works