STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS —J. Michael Harrison, an operations researcher who admits “I live in a pretty abstract world,” but whose work has addressed issues of staffing telephone call centers or how data packets are routed through the internet, is the 2009 recipient of the Robert T. Davis Award, presented by the Stanford Business School deans to recognize a colleague for a lifetime of service and achievement.

The Adams Distinguished Professor of Management, Harrison was honored at a faculty dinner that included some good natured jibes at the abstract nature of his work. “Operations,” joked colleague James Patell, “is the study of words that are 80 percent vowels.”

The award is the most recent recognizing his work. Harrison was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2008, received the 2004 John von Neumann Theory Prize from the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), and the 2001 Lanchester Prize from the same organization.

In addition to his work in operations management, Harrison is the coauthor of two influential papers in mathematical finance that developed the mathematical foundations of option theory. With colleague David Kreps, the Business School’s Theodore J. Kreps Professor of Economics, Harrison introduced the notion of equivalent martingale measures, which have since become a standard tool in theoretical analysis.

“For more than 35 years I’ve had one employer: Stanford University generally and [the] GSB specifically,” he told the audience. “I count myself lucky to have landed here. Throughout those years I’ve worked in an intellectual atmosphere where depth and permanence are emphasized, and I’ve had enormous freedom. I have not always been able to deliver depth and permanence, but there’s never been any ambiguity about the goal.

“For the most part, my research has been supported by my School, not by outside funding agencies. Through five deans and innumerable associate deans, that support has been unwavering. This is the way the institution works, not some special deal that I managed to negotiate. Three crucial factors in my research career have been the School’s stability, its commitment to developing junior faculty, and it scholarly orientation.”

The Davis award has been presented 10 times previously. It honors the late Robert T. Davis, Kresge Professor of Marketing, who was a member of the School’s faculty for 37 years.