Outstanding Contribution Award 2019
Eric Wolstenholme
The outstanding contribution award recognises those who have supported the development of the field of System Dynamics in the UK and/or have contributed their time and energy to supporting the activities of the UK Chapter. In 2019 this was awarded to Eric Wolstenholme.
Eric is a leading expert in System Dynamics, author of two books with another close to publication. He is a past President of the International System Dynamics Society and the UK Chapter, the founding editor of System Dynamics Review, and received the Jay Wright Forrester Award in 2004 for his seminal work on generic system archetypes.
Having trained as a mining engineer, Eric worked in operations research for the Coal Board, then to academia, Bradford University, with professorships at Stirling, Leeds Beckett, and South Bank. He forged links with the System Dynamics community in the US, including JW Forrester and Barry Richmond, and was an early adopter of Stella/iThink software. He was organiser and chair of International System Dynamics Conference, Stirling 1994.
Eric had a parallel career in consulting, founding Cognitus and Symmetric (via OLM); many Chapter members had their first experience of modelling under his tutelage.
A quote from a colleague: “You never come away from a conversation with Eric without having learned something new and interesting.”
A quote from Eric: “I use system dynamics when the devil’s in the interconnections rather than the detail.”