Abstract
It is clear why the contributions of physicists during World War II were central in the successes of radar, sonar, proximity fuses and atomic bombs. It is not so clear what they contributed to Operations Research (OR) and Systems Engineering (SE), and which of their skills were particularly relevant to these developments. This paper is an attempt to answer that question for OR. In the process, we look briefly at the history of OR and of Taylorism, and compare developments in the United States and Great Britain. We also discuss the relation of OR to SE. The paper can be considered as a study in how authority is appropriated, and how the differing contexts in the US and UK shaped the differing outcome in these two countries.
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