Agner Krarup Erlang
Agner Krarup Erlang was a Danish mathematician and engineer at the Copenhagen Telephone Company whose 1909 paper on random telephone calls founded queueing theory.
What they did and why it matters
Erlang's queueing theory explains why waiting lines grow sharply as a resource approaches full use, which is why warehouses need spare capacity at pack stations and docks. Studying telephone exchanges, he showed that random calls follow a Poisson pattern and developed formulas linking traffic, capacity, and waiting. The Erlang formulas are still used to staff call centers, including customer service teams answering where-is-my-order questions. In fulfillment, the same math shows why running a pack line at 95 percent of capacity causes long queues, while 80 percent keeps orders flowing.
Related people
Sources
- Agner Krarup Erlang (MacTutor History of Mathematics, University of St Andrews) mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk
- Agner Krarup Erlang (Wikipedia) en.wikipedia.org