Robert Fourer's career has been devoted to the theory and practice of optimization, going back to the 1970s when he worked at the National Bureau of Economic Research and studied Operations Research at Stanford University. He was a member of the Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences faculty at Northwestern University for over three decades, during which time he participated in the invention of the AMPL modeling language while on sabbatical at Bell Laboratories. In 2002 he co-founded AMPL Optimization Inc. to advance the development, marketing, and support of the AMPL system.