Memorial Minute: Myron Fiering

MYRON B FIERING MEMORIAL MINUTE

Myron B Fiering, Gordon McKay Professor of Engineering and Applied Mathematics, died on October 28, 1992, at the age of 58. Born in New York City, Professor Fiering graduated with an A.B. from Harvard in 1955, and a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1960. A leading authority on water resources systems design, he was appointed Gordon McKay Professor of Engineering and Applied Mathematics in 1969. He served on the Admissions Committee for the College and also chaired the Standing Committee on Athletics.

In his professional endeavors, Fiering left his indelible mark. Those who knew him only by his papers could appreciate his intellect. Those who knew him personally cannot read his papers without sensing his inner soul. He was both an idealist and a realist. He sought to make the world a better place: solutions that merely benefitted some without imposing further hardship on others were not totally satisfactory to him.

In the late 1950s Harold A. Thomas, Jr. and Fiering created a new and very important field within hydrology called "operational" hydrology. They revolutionized how engineers plan and design water projects worldwide. Essentially, operational hydrology addressed the problem faced by a shortage of historical information upon which the engineers had to design water projects that would have to last for many years in the future. They viewed the actual hydrological record as just one sample from the universe of potential outcomes and devised simple and elegant ways in which synthetic sequences of hydrology could be generated that were statistically identical to the original data series. This provided engineers designing dams the ability to explore the consequences of sequences of hydrology that had not been experienced historically, but which were equally likely to happen, greatly improving the confidence engineers have in their structures. During the period 1961 to 1971 Fiering published over 30 papers and 3 books on this subject. Many of the papers and books are now regarded as classics in the field.

Fiering made a major shift in his academic research in the late 1970s. This shift resulted from his chairmanship of a National Academy of Sciences Panel on the Scientific Basis of Water Resource Management. From that time on he became increasingly critical of developments in the field. In particular, he was incensed that, in the professional journals now devoted to this subject, clever mathematical manipulation had largely replaced the empirically based approach initiated by himself and Thomas. Fewer and fewer papers were even remotely connected to the analysis of real engineering decisions or even real hydrological data. He devoted much of his remaining time attempting to make the profession remember its empirical roots and its role in aiding engineering and economic decisions.

As a research engineer and scientist, Fiering was also interested in the theory and practice of decision making and policy analysis. In the mid-1970s at Harvard there was no degree program in Operations Research or Management Science as in other universities. Fiering joined with Howard Raiffa and other likeminded faculty members from around the University and, circumventing all the Harvard bureaucracy, launched an interdisciplinary non-program called Decision and Control run by a non-committee with non-members from the Business School, the Statistics and the Economics Departments, and the Division of Applied Sciences. It actually was a program guided and nurtured mostly by Fiering and Raiffa without any budget, without any formal approval by the Arts and Sciences Faculty, without even a part-time secretary. And yet through the years it boasted of many successful Ph.D. students, who went on to make major contributions in the field.

The informal set of Decision and Control courses at Harvard evolved over time into a formalized Ph.D. program in Decision Sciences. Fiering was instrumental in getting the Arts and Sciences Faculty to join the Business School in supporting the program. He was an effective, politically astute, highly principled advocate for breaking down disciplinary walls separating schools and departments in the University.

Another example of this was Fiering's interest in introducing quantitative models into clinical medical practice. Working with Dr. Nicholas O'Connor, and supported by the NIH, they first developed computer programs for administering and monitoring the fluid and electrolyte therapy of burn patients. This work was then expanded to develop a general family of models first to predict outcomes, and then to assess and modify the clinical course of multisystem organ failure in patients in the surgical intensive care units of the Brigham and Women's Hospital. They also conducted an elective course at the Medical School in decision theory. Over the years several graduate -- and a large number of undergraduate -- students contributed significantly to this research.

Fiering joined the Board of Boston's Beth Israel Hospital because he was interested in how medical care was delivered, appreciating the blending of ever-increasing sophisticated technology with the pressures for efficiency arising out of health care cost inflation, and how these could be met in ways that sustained and even reinforced the humanity, warmth and personalization so important in meeting the felt needs of patients. His knowledge of the entire Boston area medical establishment was truly awesome. He was the person to consult if you got sick. Within minutes he would have an appointment for you with the best specialist in the Boston area for treating your affliction.

Fiering was a great teacher and an ideal colleague with whom to discuss ideas or to read the draft of a paper; he was always immediately available. Drafts would be back within a day -- complete with detailed comments, questions, suggestions for improvement, and almost always with significant grammatical improvement. He was unstinting of his time and enthusiasm with students, colleagues, and staff alike.

One of his undergraduate courses, Engineering Sciences 102 "Introduction to Operations Research," had a profound effect on many undergraduates. The classes were a wonderful mixture of humor and profound insight. Profes- sor Fiering had a penchant for puns -- generally, ones that were absolutely terrible. Every year, he would randomly put the Greek letter nu in an equation, waiting for some unsuspecting student to fall into his trap and ask "what's nu?" But his classes were much more than just humor. He believed passionately in mathematical models, partly because of their beauty, party because of the unique insights they provided about the world. And his lectures reflected this. Up there in front of his students, he exuded a school boy's sense of discovery.

A portrait of Professor Fiering would not be complete without mention of his role outside the classroom. He had an exceptional rapport with students. He always said that graduate students were important to him, and it was absolutely true. His door was always open to students -- whether to discuss an idea, provide some needed encouragement, or just chat about the good old days at Kirkland House. To those 33 students lucky enough to have been his Ph.D. students, he devoted enormous amounts of time encouraging, prodding, questioning, and was always attentive to what the students were attempting. And he was always proud of their accomplishments. He loved nothing better than to get an occasional telephone call from them detailing successes, or troubles, in their professional and personal lives.

Frankly speaking, Fiering was a computer nut. He loved to program, particularly in FORTRAN. He was delighted when personal computers finally got a decent FORTRAN compiler. He wrote all of his own programs. He even wrote many for which there was readily available code; he was not sure if he could trust other programmers' work. This was a lesson he himself had learned from the first river basin simulation models he developed for the Army Corps of Engineers, which, when they were released after they had been reprogrammed by commercial programmers, had several major bugs. Even 30 years later, some of these bugs are still surfacing.

Fiering was the consummate advisor and consultant, particularly to governments and public sector agencies. He brought to this role the same enthusiasm that he exhibited in his academic career. Above all, he remained the patient teacher. He was not always successful, but he was always right! One of his favorite expressions to government clients was "You would like to have good outcomes, but all that we can guarantee are good decisions." Some government decisions makers, unhappy with this advice, would look for consultants who promised good outcomes. Fiering generally developed excel- lent rapport with his consulting clients and he spoke of them with great affection. It takes a rare individual to feel affectionate toward an institution like the US Army Corps of Engineers!

Fiering looked at the world ever anew, bringing to it his remarkable intelligence, sensitivity and sensibility. And, of course, that splendid humor, a capacity to laugh, with perspective that placed both himself and the world in context. Fiering, it seems, was an antenna for the world's worst jokes. If you thought today's joke was bad, just wait until tomorrow! His sense of humor ranged widely from the guffaw to the macabre.

In his younger days Fiering was a very competitive sportsman until a hard slide into second forced him to hang up his spikes. He loved his time on the Athletic Committee. As with everything else he brought immense enthusiasm to the task and was never happier than worrying about what to do about the goal posts after the Harvard-Yale game or trying to ease the coach's potentially superstar, potentially illiterate, running-back prospect past the scrutiny of the Admissions Committee.

Fiering, with all of his broad intellectual and professional activities, was above all else a family man. Anyone who knew Mike well was drawn into his warm family circle. He is survived by his wife Jill, and his two daughters Suzie and Lisa.

Fiering gave detailed instructions for what to do after he died and wrote a letter to his family, friends, and colleagues to be read at his funeral. Since Fiering relished serving on committees to write memorial minutes we have chosen to let him have the last word.

"I want to be remembered in small ways, every day. Every time there is music in the air, every time there is a great guffaw of laughter from an absolutely terrible joke, every time a thoughtful and loving presence would make a difference in your lives. And that is an everyday occurrence, not an annual ritual. You honor me best by continuing to provoke and provide laughter and happiness. You honor me best by picking up the pieces of your lives and finding joy and happiness with each other, with your respective families. Honor me, if you must, by being happy. Life is too short for anything else . . . life is too short altogether. In the final analysis, you who remain should not feel too sad. It is I who should feel the pain of having been shortchanged. But death remains inevitable, and we can wonder only about small, statistically insignificant, fluctuations in its arrival time."

Joseph J. Harrington

Ralph Mitchell

Nicholas O'Connor

Howard Raiffa

John P. Reardon

Peter Rogers, Chair