Preface to Special Issue on ‘Stochastic Programming: The state of the art 1998’

This preface describes some of the papers presented at the 8th International Conference on Stochastic Programming (August 1998) and which are included in the issue of Annals of Operations Research (volume 85) abstracted in this issue of IAOR. The preface sums up the state of the art in Stochastic Programming. Its value for the researcher lies in the short history of the subject, and the bibliography of books and conference proceedings (not individual papers). The history is demonstrated in a pictorial format showing the principal lines of development of the subject up to 1998.