Control theorist

People in systems and control

• Pierre-Simon Laplace invented the Z-transform in his work on probability theory, now used to solve discrete-time control theory problems. The Z-transform is a discrete-time equivalent of the Laplace transform which is named after him.
• Irmgard Flugge-Lotz developed the theory of discontinuous automatic control and applied it to automatic aircraft control systems.
• Alexander Lyapunov in the 1890s marks the beginning of stability theory.
• Harold S. Black invented the concept of negative-feedback amplifiers in 1927. He managed to develop stable negative-feedback amplifiers in the 1930s.
• Harry Nyquist developed the Nyquist stability criterion for feedback systems in the 1930s.
• Richard Bellman developed dynamic programming in the 1940s.
• Warren E. Dixon, control theorist and a professor
• Andrey Kolmogorov co-developed the Wiener–Kolmogorov filter in 1941.
• Norbert Wiener co-developed the Wiener–Kolmogorov filter and coined the term cybernetics in the 1940s.
• John R. Ragazzini introduced digital control and the use of Z-transform in control theory (invented by Laplace) in the 1950s.
• Lev Pontryagin introduced the maximum principle and the bang–bang principle.
• Pierre-Louis Lions developed viscosity solutions into stochastic control and optimal control methods.
• Rudolf E. Kálmán pioneered the state-space approach to systems and control. Introduced the notions of controllability and observability. Developed the Kalman filter for linear estimation.
• Ali H. Nayfeh who was one of the main contributors to nonlinear control theory and published many books on perturbation methods
• Jan C. Willems Introduced the concept of dissipativity, as a generalization of Lyapunov function to input/state/output systems. The construction of the storage function, as the analogue of a Lyapunov function is called, led to the study of the linear matrix inequality (LMI) in control theory. He pioneered the behavioral approach to mathematical systems theory.