Invited to join the faculty of the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1956, Jay Forrester created the field of system dynamics to apply engineering concepts of feedback systems and digital simulation to understand what he famously called “the counterintuitive behavior of social systems.”

His ground-breaking 1961 book, Industrial Dynamics, remains a clear and relevant statement of philosophy and methodology in the field. His later books and his numerous articles broke new ground in our understanding of complex human systems and policy problems.

Jay Forrester did so much more than mentioned here, though. A full obituary is now available in the New York Times. Further information is available via the System Dynamics Society homepage.