Michael Athans was a kind person. He was always happy to help his students, his colleagues, his friends. He helped me to come to the U.S. and then he helped me in my career. At the beginning of my career I worked at Alphatech, the company Michael founded with Nils Sandell, Alan Willsky and Sol Gully. The experience I got from my work at Alphatech was extremely valuable in my academic career afterwards.
Michael made very significant contributions to the theory and applications of automatic control. He was among the leaders in the application of modern control methodologies to transportation systems, power systems, the automotive industry, the aerospace industry, and to NASA’s space program. In collaboration with Edwin Kuh, he made noteworthy contributions to econometrics. He was among the leaders in the development of control theory for large-scale systems. During our discussions at Alphatech he shared with me his vision about large-scale systems and emphasized the importance of understanding the role of information in decentralized decision-making. At Alphatech he, along with engineers behavioral decision theorists and psychologists, led the development of models and theories that describe how humans make decisions that lead to efficient performance of large-scale systems, in particular, power systems, and command control and communication systems.
Michael also made very significant contributions to education in automatic control. He created a successful graduate course on optimal control that I took during my graduate studies at MIT. He co-authored one of the best books on optimal control theory and its applications. He supervised the doctoral research of many students who had successful careers in industry and academia. Michael Athans was one of the top researchers and educators in automatic control in his era.
– Demos Teneketzis
I became acquainted with Mike while working at Systems Control, Inc. (SCI) in Palo Alto, CA, where he used to consult during summers in the early 70’s.
At one point, my supervisor recommended that I should be fired because I am “wasting company time” when developing a novel tracking algorithm in clutter – under one of the BMDATC contracts to SCI – and trying to publish it (with company approval) “to make my name outside the company”. The algorithm in question was the Probabilistic Data Association (PDA) Filter.
Following this, his manager decided to get Mike’s opinion on my work, since he was available as a consultant that summer. So I gave a presentation to Mike and his assessment was: “the algorithm does make sense”. The first consequence of this was that I was not fired. The second was that when Mike went back to MIT after the summer and consulted at Lincoln Labs, he developed a tracking algorithm in the presence of a wake, which was similar to the idea behind the PDA. When Mike’s work on this appeared – as a full length paper – in the IEET-AC, I noticed that he duly referenced my paper on PDA which by then was already published. I was very pleased that the “great Mike” was inspired by my idea and, above all, showed professionalism in referencing my prior work.
When I told this story at his retirement party he did not remember this episode of his Palo Alto summers, but was quite pleased.
One minor aside: as Al Willsky told me, at MIT dorms there used to be a sign “No PDA”, i.e., PDA (Personal Display of Affection) was unacceptable at MIT – nevertheless, the other PDA did become accepted.
– Yaakov Bar-Shalom
It was late August 1991. My first time at LIDS, in the old Building 35, at the corner of Mass Ave. and Vassar. It could have been my 2nd day in the US, coming from Greece, where MIT had (and still has) an aura of the most technologically advanced place on the face of the earth. I was assigned to a rather dilapidated office on the 4th floor, that in no way matched with the mental picture I had created. As I am settling in, I hear a knock on the door and a Greek-looking man comes in. He tells me he is Michael Athans (at the time I had no idea who Michael Athans was), his office is next door, he heard I just joined, and he came to welcome me and let me know that for anything I may need, I should feel free to go and find him. Suddenly, I felt much more at home. I did not have the chance to work with Mike, but it shows the very human side of the great Michael Athans, who would think about and find the time to drop in and welcome an unknown first year graduate student.
– Yannis Paschalidis
Michael was the most influential teacher of my life.
His impact began with the very first sentences spoken in our research collaboration together, which went like this:
“Here is a stack of papers, read through them and see if they stimulate some interesting ideas. The most important thing is not describing a problem that seems interesting to you, it is framing a problem that is well-posed enough mathematically to actually be solved, and it needs to be relevant. You have to learn to ask the question in the right way. And sometimes your notion of the larger higher value problem can be approached or maybe even reached by stepping along solutions to subproblems that lead you there, a piece at a time.”
“Okay, that’s enough. Now get out of my office.” Ha!
And so he set me off on the most influential journey of learning I will ever have. And it has served me in so many aspects of life. Thank you Michael, your friendship and wisdom will be sorely missed.
– John Wissinger
Mike hired me as a LIDS researcher in the Spring of 1978, and during my first year in LIDS, I shared an office with Dave Castanon. He tried hard to raise our level of decorum and professionalism. I remember in particular that during a summer, since the building was not air conditioned, we had taken refuge in the MIT library. Mike tried to find us, and upon finding no one, wrote us a memo telling us to make sure to notify his office of our whereabouts, in case a contract monitor might make an unannounced visit. Later after being hired as an Assistant Professor, Mike and I co-taught a course on Classical and Modern Control which had been designed by Gunter Stein. This is when I came to appreciate his amazing intuition about control problems. Another under appreciated aspect of Mike’s career was that he was an outstanding lecturer. I remember in particular when we were both teaching sections of 6.002, and the students in Mike’s section received the best grades at the final.
– Bernard Levy
I first met Mike Athans during the 1962-63 A/Y at MIT. His name was a few syllables longer then, and he was teaching (for the first time I believe) his Optimal Control course. I loved the course and was captivated by Mike’s enthusiasm for the material. So, I asked to do a MS thesis under him. He said yes, and that was the start of a beautiful relationship that lasted for over 50 years.
Mike became my advisor, my teacher, my confidant, my colleague, my mentor, my business associate, my defacto older brother; but most of all – he became my friend. We were part of each other’s life.
Mike loved life in all its dimensions, but unfortunately, he loved his cigarettes. He passionately loved his work – work that led to a myriad of technical contributions and accomplishments. Too many to get into here.
I learned a lot from Mike. For example, never tell him that it was your birthday lest you get your ear pinched and nearly torn off. A strange Greek tradition.
I’ll miss Big Mike as we affectionately used to call him. Thank you for everything.
– David L. Kleinman
Michael was my dear ‘Greek’ professor. I had the opportunity of doing my MS thesis with him. I was part of the team doing optimization work on US macro economic models together with Ed Kuh, Bob Pindyck, etal.We had two papers together, one based on my MS thesis with him only. The second one was on the Stochastic Optimization of non-linear US macroeconomic models publishes by the Intriligator Series.
Michael was always very warm and supportive of my work and also catalytic in my pursuit of a joint doctorate in Control Theory and Economics together with Ed Kuh and Bob Pindyck.Through him, I had the opportunity of meeting and becoming friends with Aleko Sarris and his dear brother Mihalis. As a Turk, It was special for me to find these wonderful Greek friends for life. I felt a special bond with Michael, perhaps because we had so much in common culturally.
I wish I had stayed more in touch with him over the past 40 years or so, but sometimes life takes you in different directions and you only discover what is really important much much later .
To Michael, Ed (Kuh) and all my fellow Students and faculty that was fortunate to work with and get to know Mihalis Athanaides 🙏May He Rest In Peace 🙏 We will surely think of him and miss him greatly…
– Turgay Ozkan