Record

Code	DS/UK/5
Dates	1926-2002
Person Name	Beer; (Anthony) Stafford (1926-2002); Professor; Management Cybernetician
Surname	Beer
Forenames	(Anthony) Stafford
Title	Professor
Epithet	Management Cybernetician
Activity	Stafford Beer started his career in the army in 1944, seeing service in India before being demobilized in 1949, having reached the rank of captain. He then joined United Steel and persuaded the management to found the Department of Operations Research and Cybernetics, which he headed. In 1961 he started an operational research consultancy in partnership with Roger Eddison called SIGMA (Science in General Management). After leaving SIGMA in 1966 to work for the International Publishing Corporation (IPC), he was appointed development director, pushing for the adoption of new computer technologies. In 1970 he left IPC to work as an independent consultant, focusing on his growing interest in social systems. In the same year he was approached by Salvador Allende’s elected socialist government of Chile to develop a national real-time computerised system, ‘Cybersyn’ to run the entire Chilean economy. This project was never completed, and when Allende was removed from power by General Augusto Pinochet’s 1973 coup, the Cybersyn project was abandoned. Beer continued to work in the Americas, consulting for the governments of Mexico, Uruguay and Venezuela. Beer was a visiting professor at almost thirty universities and received honorary doctorates from the University of Leeds, the University of St. Gallen, the University of Sunderland and the University of Valladolid. He was also president of the World Organization of Systems and Cybernetics. He received awards from the Royal Swedish Academy for Engineering Sciences in 1958, from the United Kingdom Systems Society, the Cybernetics Society, the American Society for Cybernetics, and the Operations Research Society of America.