A historical note on the 3/2-approximation algorithm for the metric traveling salesman problem

Understand

One of the most fundamental results in combinatorial optimization is the polynomial-time 3/2-approximation algorithm for the metric traveling salesman problem.

• It was presented by Christofides in 1976 and is well known as "the Christofides algorithm".
• Recently, some authors started calling it "Christofides-Serdyukov algorithm", pointing out that it was published independently in the USSR in 1978.
• We provide some historic background on Serdyukov's findings and a translation of his article from Russian into English.