The general form of the TSP appears to have been first studied by mathematicians during the 1930s in Vienna and at Harvard , notably by Karl Menger , who defines the problem , considers the obvious brute-force algorithm , and observes the non-optimality of the nearest neighbor heuristic : Hassler Whitney at Princeton University introduced the name traveling salesman problem soon after .
The general form of the TSP appears to have been first studied by mathematicians during the 1930s in Vienna and at Harvard , notably by Karl Menger .