Athans, Michael

Michael Athans (born Michael Athanassiades in Drama, Greece, May 3, 1937 - May 26, 2020) was a Greek-American control theorist and a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a Fellow of the IEEE (1973) and a Fellow of the AAAS (1977). He was the recipient of numerous awards for his contributions in the field of control theory. A pioneer in the field of control theory, he helped shape modern control theory and spearheaded the field of multivariable control system design and the field of robust control. Athans was a member of the technical staff at Lincoln Laboratory from 1961 to 1964, and a Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science faculty member from 1964 to 1998. Upon retirement, Athans moved to Lisbon, Portugal, where he was an Invited Research Professor in the Institute for Systems and Robotics, Instituto Superior Técnico where he received a honoris causa doctorate from the Universidade Técnica de Lisboa in 2011.