golobmemoriamfrankhaight19192006.md 7.8 KB
category: literaturenote citekey: golobmemoriamfrankhaight19192006 title: In Memoriam Frank A. Haight 1919–2006 authors: "Golob, Thomas F.; Haight, Molly I." year: 2006 date: 2006-06-01 2006-06-01 doi: 10.1016/j.trc.2006.07.001 publication: "Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies" url: "https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0968090X06000428" zotero_key: MHTPCLBG zotero_storage: ZMHQKCMH collections: magistritöö / kohalikud teed folder: 001_artiklid firstAuthor: "Golob, Thomas F."
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Transportation Research Part C 14 (2006) 229–231
www.elsevier.com/locate/trc
Obituary
In Memoriam Frank A. Haight 1919–2006
Frank Haight, the founding editor of the journals Transportation Research and Accident Analysis and Prevention, died on April 30, 2006 at the age of 86. He was one of the founding fathers of modern transportation research. Raymond Peck pointed out in a recent testimonial1 that while Frank's own contributions to the transportation literature are substantial, founding three major scientific journals took extraordinary vision, energy and intellect.
Frank was a member of that distinguished cadre of scientists who developed the fundamentals of traffic flow theory in the 1950s and early 1960s: Martin Beckmann, Les Edie, Denos Gazis, Robert Herman, Elliott Montroll, Gordon Newell, Reuben Smeed, J.C. Tanner, and John Wardrop, among others. Frank's contributions to traffic flow theory stemmed from his profound knowledge of probability theory and stochastic processes, particularly queueing theory. His 1957 dissertation at the University of New Zealand was entitled ''An Investigation of Queue Stability with Special Reference to the Traffic Intensity,'' and his early publications included ''Towards a unified theory of road traffic'' (Operations Research, 1958), ''The generalized Poisson distribution'' (Annals of the Institute of Statistical Mathematics, 1959), and ''The volume–density relation in the theory of traffic flow'' (Operations Research, 1960).
Early on in his career, Frank's talent for critique and overview came to the forefront. In 1963 he wrote ''The future of traffic flow theory'' (Traffic Quarterly). He seemed always to be asking: ''Where are the new ideas coming from, and how do they fit in? In 1963 Frank published the first book in the field – Mathematical Theories of Traffic Flow (Academic Press, New York). This was years ahead of the other well known books
1 Tribute posted on the ''Frank Avery Haight Tribute Site'' at http://www.julianhaight.com/fah/obit.shtml (also accessed at the University of California Irvine, Institute of Transportation Studies website http://www.its.uci.edu/).
on traffic theory, and was translated into Russian in 1966. Frank's later works include Handbook of the Poisson Distribution (1967, John Wiley and Sons) and Applied Probability (1981, Plenum Publishing Company, New York).
With tenacious devotion to the cause of establishing a forum for this new traffic flow theory, and in order to integrate it with the other aspects of transportation research, Frank sought out a publisher and founded Transportation Research in 1967. It has been the top rated journal in the field ever since. Like a successful stock, Transportation Research split into two parts in 1979 – Part A: Policy and Practice, and Part B. Methodological. Carlos Daganzo observed1 that Frank was open minded, always on the lookout for fresh new ideas and interested in helping the people who create them. During Frank's editorship of more than 35 years, he attended innumerable conferences and visited researchers throughout the world, finding and encouraging potential authors and referees capable of judging new work. Fred Mannering noted1 that it was Frank's editorial genius that set the stage on which the editors in our field now play.
Frank next turned his attention to traffic safety, another field that needed a coalescing journal. In 1969 Frank founded Accident Analysis and Prevention. Rune Elvik observed1 that AAP defined a new academic discipline of accident research. And Dominique Fleury pointed out1 that AAP has always been THE reference review for road safety research.
Frank also made a substantial personal contribution to traffic safety research. He was particularly adept at think pieces in which he questioned conventional beliefs and challenged other scientists and policy makers. The titles of some of his articles reveal their scope, many of them ahead of their time: ''Do speed limits save lives?'' (in Statistics: A Guide to the Unknown, Holden-Day, 1972), ''A traffic safety fable'' (Journal of Safety Research, 1973), ''Traffic safety in developing countries'' (Journal of Safety Research, 1980), ''Why the per capita traffic fatality rate is falling'' (Journal of Safety Research, 1984), ''Road safety: A perspective and a new strategy'' (Journal of Safety Research, 1985), ''Problems in estimating the comparative cost of safety and mobility.'' (Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, 1994), and ''Why is the traffic safety community so often hostile to research?'' (Journal of Safety Research, 1994). Frank was thinking out of the box before anyone ever considered putting a box around thinking.
Frank was a member of the commission that wrote Reducing Traffic Injury – A Global Challenge (Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, Melbourne, 1988). That work won the 1988 Volvo Traffic Safety Award, and in 1993 it was published in China. Included in the many awards Frank received was the 2002 Distinguished Career Award from the American Public Health Association.
After a stewardship of over 35 years, Frank recently handed over the reins of his three journals to a new generation of four editors, located in three countries. They have a tough act to follow. Frank always felt that, as an editor, he worked for the authors, not for the publisher nor for academic institutions that used peer review publications as evaluation criteria. He also went about his business as he did everything in his life, with great gusto and humor. Two of Frank's favorite sayings were ''Trying to publish in refereed journals is not a path to positive feedback. If you want positive feedback, I recommend getting a dog'' and ''The pen is mightier than the sword, but the editor is mightier still.''
Born in 1919 in Des Moines, Iowa, Frank earned a BA and an MSc in mathematics at the State University of Iowa, followed by a PhD in mathematics at the University of New Zealand. Frank subsequently held faculty positions at University of Auckland, UCLA, Penn State, and UC Irvine. His dedication and tireless contributions to his field did not prevent his enthusiastic pursuit of various personal interests. He was a voracious reader and an intrepid world traveler. His interests included history, languages, politics, literature, geography, and music. At the time of his death, he was working on a reference book on the regions of Europe. Frank's friends around the world will miss his enjoyment of lively conversation and intellectual debate as well as his dry sense of humor and even tempered delight in living. He is survived by his wife, Barbara, his sister Hildred King, his children Toby Hollander, Julian Haight and Molly Haight, and his three granddaughters, Tanja, Amanda, and Emma Hollander.
Frank had a saying, adapted from a line in a Jefferson Airplane song: ''No man is an island. True, but with a little effort, he can be a peninsula.''
June 27, 2006
T.F. Golob Molly I. Haight University of California, Institute of Transportation Studies 522 Social Science Tower Irvine, CA 92697, United States Tel.: +1 949 824 6287; fax: +1 949 824 8385 E-mail address: tgolob@uci.edu (T.F. Golob)