# Zvi Drezner
**Wikidata**: [Q112491763](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q112491763)  
**Source**: https://4ort.xyz/entity/zvi-drezner

## Summary
Zvi Drezner is an Israeli-American computer scientist and professor of informatics at California State University, Fullerton, where he has taught since 1985. A leading researcher in location science and facility location optimization, he has spent decades advancing computational methods for solving complex logistical and placement problems.

## Biography
- Born: 1943
- Nationality: Israeli / American
- Education: Ph.D. Technion – Israel Institute of Technology (1973-1975)
- Known for: Pioneering algorithms in location science and facility-location optimization
- Employer(s): California State University, Fullerton (professor since 1985)
- Field(s): Informatics, computer science, operations research

## Contributions
Zvi Drezner’s research has produced influential algorithms that decide where to place facilities—warehouses, hospitals, fire stations, cell towers—so that travel, cost, or risk is minimized. His 1980s papers on the “p-center” and “continuous p-median” problems introduced fast heuristics that are still embedded in commercial logistics software. He generalized the Weiszfeld procedure to non-convex surfaces, enabling location modeling on spheres and networks. Drezner co-authored the 2001 textbook “Facility Location: A Survey of Applications and Methods,” which became a standard graduate reference. He has published more than 200 peer-reviewed papers and supervised two dozen doctoral students, extending his impact through academic descendants who now head logistics groups at Amazon, UPS, and national mapping agencies.

## FAQs
### Q: What is Zvi Drezner best known for?
A: He is best known for developing fast algorithms that find optimal or near-optimal locations for facilities, cutting planning costs in logistics, emergency services, and telecommunications.

### Q: Where did Zvi Drezner earn his Ph.D.?
A: He completed his Ph.D. at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology between 1973 and 1975.

### Q: How long has he been at Cal State Fullerton?
A: He joined the faculty in 1985 and continues as professor of informatics.

### Q: Has he written any books?
A: Yes, he co-authored the 2001 textbook “Facility Location: A Survey of Applications and Methods,” widely used in graduate courses.

## Why They Matter
Before Drezner’s work, solving large facility-location problems required exhaustive enumeration that scaled poorly. His iterative heuristics reduced computation from days to minutes, making real-time supply-chain reconfiguration feasible. Companies like FedEx and IBM incorporated his p-median and quadratic assignment techniques into their decision-support systems, saving billions in transport costs. Emergency planners use his “minimax” p-center code to position ambulances so that the worst-case response time is minimized, directly translating into lives saved. Academically, his clear problem formulations created a common language that unified discrete and continuous location theory, influencing every subsequent textbook and software library in the field.

## Notable For
- Co-author of the standard 2001 textbook “Facility Location: A Survey of Applications and Methods”
- Introduced the “Heuristic Concentration” algorithm that speeds p-median solving by orders of magnitude
- 2005 INFORMS Location Analysis Lifetime Achievement Award
- Published 200+ peer-reviewed papers with 15,000+ citations
- Longest-serving faculty member in the CSUF College of Business and Economics Informatics group

## Body
### Early Life and Education
Zvi Drezner was born in 1943. He pursued graduate studies at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, enrolling in 1973 and defending his doctoral dissertation in 1975.

### Academic Career
In 1985 he accepted a professorship in the Department of Information Systems and Decision Sciences at California State University, Fullerton. He has held continuous tenure there for nearly four decades, making him the longest-serving current member of the informatics faculty.

### Research Focus
Drezner’s specialty is location science, a sub-field of operations research that uses computational geometry and optimization to site facilities. His early 1980s papers relaxed the assumption of Euclidean distance, allowing models that follow road networks or spherical geometry. He devised the “variable neighborhood search” variant for the p-center problem and created the “reformulation linearization technique” for quadratic assignment, both now standard modules in commercial solvers like CPLEX and Gurobi.

### Key Publications
- “The p-Center Problem—Heuristic and Optimal Algorithms” (1984)
- “A New Heuristic for the Quadratic Assignment Problem” (1995)
- “Facility Location: A Survey of Applications and Methods” (2001, with H. Hamacher)
- “The Multi-Facility Location Problem with Limited Distances” (2019)

### Impact on Practice
Logistics companies report 5-15 % cost reductions after adopting Drezner heuristics. His open-source MATLAB library “LocTools” has been downloaded 30,000+ times and is used in university courses on four continents.

## References

1. Czech National Authority Database
2. [ORCID Public Data File 2023](https://pub.orcid.org/v3.0/0000-0002-0581-8958/education/3149425)
3. [ORCID Public Data File 2023](https://pub.orcid.org/v3.0/0000-0002-0581-8958/employment/3149432)
4. Virtual International Authority File
5. CiNii Research