Dimitri Bertsekas PhD ’71, the Jerry McAfee (1940) Emeritus Professor in Engineering within the Division of Electrical Engineering and Pc Science (EECS), a principal investigator within the Laboratory for Data and Resolution Techniques (LIDS), and the Fulton Professor of Computational Resolution Making at Arizona State College, died on June 3 at his dwelling in Belmont, Massachusetts. He was 83 years outdated.
Over the course of his profession, Bertsekas’ analysis spanned, and had a definitive affect upon, a number of fields, together with optimization, management, large-scale computation, reinforcement studying, and synthetic intelligence. He served as a advisor to numerous personal firms; an editor for a number of scientific journals; the founding father of a publishing firm, Athena Scientific; and chief scientific advisor of Bayforest Applied sciences, a London-based quantitative funding firm. Nevertheless, his most lasting affect might have come via his prolific authorship and co-authorship of over 20 extremely influential books, monographs, and textbooks, and thru his huge community of scholars, mentees, mates, and collaborators.
Bertsekas earned his undergraduate diploma on the Nationwide Technical College of Athens, Greece, earlier than acquiring his MS in electrical engineering at George Washington College in 1969, and his PhD in system science at MIT in 1971. He started his college profession at Stanford College, the place he spent three years, and the College of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the place he spent 5 extra earlier than returning to MIT in 1979. He would stick with MIT’s Division of EECS till 2019, at which level he turned a full-time college member at Arizona State College at Tempe. Alongside the best way, Bertsekas taught, suggested, and mentored college students who would finally turn out to be his colleagues in any respect 4 establishments.
“Dimitri performed a defining function in my profession,” says Asu Ozdaglar, division head of EECS at MIT. “I made a decision to alter my analysis focus after taking his nonlinear optimization class. The conceptual readability and the mathematical rigor he has introduced to each matter, mixed along with his means to attach idea to necessary issues established a basis that has continued to tell my scholarly work within the years to comply with.” One other former MIT scholar, Jinane Abounadi, now government director of the MIT Sandbox Innovation Fund Program, nonetheless remembers Bertsekas’ tutelage as a spotlight of her time as a scholar at MIT: “I really feel so lucky to have had Dimitri as my professor and advisor. I had the chance to study optimization, dynamic programming, and neuro-dynamic programming from a real grasp.”
A former scholar on the College of Illinois, Steven E. Shreve remembers being impressed by Bertsekas’ course on nonlinear optimization and asking if Bertsekas would contemplate changing into his PhD advisor. “Somewhat than answering my query instantly, Dimitri gave me a preliminary draft of his manuscript, which finally turned his ebook ‘Dynamic Programming and Stochastic Management,’ and requested me to proofread it,” remembers Shreve, now Orion Hoch College Professor Emeritus within the Division of Mathematical Sciences at Carnegie Mellon College. “From this manuscript, I discovered the idea of dynamic programming and mastered many necessary particular instances. Speaking with Dimitri as I learn, I acquired one-on-one instruction. When the ebook lastly appeared, Dimitri generously acknowledged my participation, as if I had performed him a favor, relatively than the opposite manner round.” The gambit was typical of Bertsekas’ understated strategy to mentorship; after the primary profitable collaboration, Bertsekas organized a analysis fellowship for Shreve and challenged him to unravel a basic query in dynamic programming. “I wanted to study a great deal of set idea to even take into consideration the query he requested,” remembers Shreve, whose work on the issue was mixed with Bertsekas’ notes to create their co-authored ebook “Stochastic Optimum Management: The Discrete Time Case.”
“Working with Dimitri on [that book] is how I discovered to write down,” says Shreve. “I discovered from Dimitri that if you wish to be acknowledged to your analysis, you could current it so others need to learn it, and I discovered how to do this.”
The readability and class of Bertsekas’ explanatory model would turn out to be his instructional hallmark. “Everybody acknowledged Dimitri’s nice skills as a author, however he went far past that, organizing whole topics into one thing that was comprehensible and a well-organized totality,” says Robert Gallager, professor emeritus {of electrical} engineering at MIT, who co-authored a 1987 ebook with Bertsekas entitled “Information Networks.” “The sector was altering quickly then, with a factor-of-two lower each two years in computation prices, and with optical fiber on the horizon for transmission. Dimitri and I every understood solely components of this discipline, with the remainder a fast-moving studying expertise. Dimitri was the best associate on this, in a position to rapidly translate exhausting ideas into easy however correct explanations and in a position to mix my information along with his into an comprehensible complete.”
Bertsekas’ shut colleague in LIDS, Munther Dahleh, remembers, “what all the time struck me was that, via his writing, one may virtually hear Dimitri talking on to the reader. His instinct, readability of thought, and distinctive perspective come via fantastically in his books. They mirror not solely his profound technical contributions, but additionally his ardour for educating and his need to assist others perceive the topic at a deep stage. … Particularly, his joint ebook with John Tsitsiklis on neuro-dynamic programming is a tour de pressure. It anticipated and helped outline most of the concepts that later turned central to reinforcement studying and approximate dynamic programming.”
Tsitsiklis himself remembers the co-writing course of with Bertsekas fondly: “For Dimitri, analysis was a artistic kind, combining craftsmanship and the creativity that we normally name artwork.” The definition of artwork and its apply was a topic of nice fascination for Bertsekas, and one which he explored at size in his 2025 essay, “Academia, Artwork, and Life,” an try to meaningfully categorize artistic work into three broadly descriptive roles — technician, craftsman, and artist — and to discover the overlaps between the three forms of apply. Past his clear and lucid writing, Bertsekas was recognized for his sturdy graphic eye, a expertise which he put to good use not solely creating illustrations for all his textbooks, however in taking memorable and artistically impressed images of his worldwide travels.
Longtime collaborator and pal David Castañón, now a professor {of electrical} and pc engineering at Boston College, remembers Bertsekas as a real Renaissance man who drew inspiration from numerous sources: “Dimitri had an insatiable curiosity for algorithmic concepts, each idea and apply. Many of those concepts have been impressed by new applied sciences (parallel computer systems, reinforcement studying, chess-playing algorithms) … Every time we met, Dimitri would introduce new ideas of curiosity; we’d work out theoretical particulars, design and conduct numerical experiments, and generate outcomes. Then, Dimitri’s creative skills would take over: designing graphics as an example ideas, typesetting textual content and figures for the papers to be accomplished. He had a uncommon present for producing concise explanations of complicated ideas. These skills led to his publishing firm Athena Scientific, the place Dimitri and his coauthors generated elegant pedagogical volumes with broad enchantment.” Tsitsiklis agrees, noting, “for Dimitri, [research] was about discovering that means, to uncover the ‘proper’ approach to view a topic, enrich it, and convey it in a crystal-clear method via his prolific writings.”
Lots of the 20-plus books both authored or co-authored by Bertsekas have been adopted to be used as textbooks at MIT in topics together with information networks, nonlinear programming, dynamic programming, community optimization, parallel and distributed computation, neuro-dynamic programming, convex evaluation and optimization, likelihood, and reinforcement studying. Stephen Boyd, Samsung Professor within the College of Engineering at Stanford, testifies to the good affect of Bertsekas’ collected works: “generations of researchers in optimization, management, and lots of associated areas discovered these subjects from Dimitri’s exquisitely clear and fantastically written textual content books. I used to be one in all them; certainly, I went into these fields in no small half due to Dimitri’s books, and his affect has been with me the entire time.”
That affect may be measured by the sheer variety of awards and honors Bertsekas gathered over the course of his profession, together with the INFORMS 1997 Prize for Analysis Excellence within the Interface Between Operations Analysis and Pc Science for Neuro-Dynamic Programming, the 2001 ACC John R. Ragazzini Schooling Award, the 2009 INFORMS Expository Writing Award, the 2014 ACC Richard E. Bellman Management Heritage Award for “contributions to the foundations of deterministic and stochastic optimization-based strategies in programs and management,” the 2014 Khachiyan Prize for Life-Time Accomplishments in Optimization, the SIAM/MOS 2015 George B. Dantzig Prize, and the 2022 IEEE Management Techniques Award. Collectively along with his coauthor John Tsitsiklis, he was awarded the 2018 INFORMS John von Neumann Principle Prize for the contributions of the analysis monographs “Parallel and Distributed Computation” and “Neuro-Dynamic Programming.” In 2001, Bertsekas was elected to the U.S. Nationwide Academy of Engineering for “pioneering contributions to basic analysis, apply and schooling of optimization/management idea.”
Nevertheless, a extra private measure of Bertsekas’ affect may be taken by the heat and affection with which his mates, co-workers, and former college students uniformly bear in mind him. Co-author John Tsitsiklis wrote, “I used to be most lucky to be one in all his apprentices, and to have lived his heat and friendship.” His former scholar at MIT, Angelia Nedich, later turned Bertsekas’ colleague at Arizona State College. She remembers: “Dimitri was an distinctive thoughts, a gifted soul that shed gentle for us seekers, however on the identical time he was very humble as he loved easy moments of life, a sip of fine espresso, a chew of flavorful meals, or a glass of spicy margarita on our highway journeys in Southwest. That’s how I like to recollect him.”
Former scholar Benjamin Van Roy, now a professor at Stanford, wrote concerning the transformation of Bertsekas from authority determine to pal (and the topic of pleasant teasing). “I recall the intimidating feedback of extra senior PhD college students as I started my very own PhD journey in LIDS. Some referred to Dimitri as an “immortal.” One other remark I recall fondly — and sometimes reminded Dimitri about — was: “Professor Bertsekas is a very good-looking man!” Their bond continued lengthy after Van Roy’s commencement. “Dimitri was a treasure to humanity: one of many nice students of our time, a Renaissance man, and an outstanding function mannequin. I used to be privileged to be among the many many he mentored, and much more privileged to rely him as a longtime pal.” Yuchao Li, a postdoc mentored by Bertsekas at Arizona State College, remembers his mentor as an virtually inexhaustible supply of each inspiration and help: “For me, Professor Bertsekas was like a loving father, filled with infinite knowledge. … He appeared to know every thing, but he remained deeply humble and open-minded. He was all the time keen to assist, even on the slightest signal of issue in my life. He instilled in me a long-lasting religion in the perfect qualities of human beings, and I’ll try to hold that religion ahead.”
Bertsekas was preceded in demise by his son Costas. He’s survived by his spouse Joanna Bertsekas (née Palashas); his son Telis Bertsekas and his spouse Wendy Bertsekas; and three grandchildren, Melina, Alexandros, and Leonidas.
