Sanjoy K. Mitter: A scholar, a gentleman, and a friend (Q2722568)

This publication provides some information on the achievements of Sanjoy K. Mitter as a scholar.NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINEThis native of Calcutta studied first in his hometown majoring in Mathematics, then he went to England where he earned a BSc in Engineering. After an interlude in Switzerland, where he was active as an engineer, he came back to Imperial College where he obtained a PhD (``Function space methods in optimal control with applications to power systems'', 1965). A next step brought him to Ohio (research, teaching) and he joined MIT in 1969 where he led a successful career becoming a prominent figure in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINEA section cites seminal publications and three phases in his academic interests can be deduced. In the seventies the topics are varied and well embedded in the trends of that time (numerics of optimization, pole placement, hierarchical systems, decentralized systems, hereditary systems, algebraic or applied aspects), at the end of the seventies and in the eighties contributions in filtering (non-Gaussianity, nonlinearity, relations with optimal control) were obtained. In the nineties he has been involved in fancier topics related to the cognitive world (vision, hybrid systems (where logic enters), learning). The fields of optimization (first, second phase) and stochastic analysis (second, third phase) underlie his evolution and in the second period, general problems tend to be attacked while in the last period one witnesses a specialization in the topics.NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINEThere is a list of theses supervised (38 PhD, 24 Masters, 5 Bachelors), of publications (books, articles (51 -- two under his sole name (the first and one of the last ones) but the coauthors of a majority of others are his students)), of conference papers and of selected invited lectures.NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINEA good biography includes reasons for someone's personal and academic evolution but this kind of information cannot be found here.NEWLINENEWLINEFor the entire collection see [Zbl 0961.00036].