Rudolf Kalman Engineer and researcher in control theory Date of Birth: 19.05.1930 Country: Hungary

Biography of Rudolf Kalman

Rudolf Kalman was an American engineer and researcher in the field of control theory. He made significant contributions to the modern theory of control, and is considered one of its founders. He is most famous for creating the Kalman filter.

Kalman was born on May 19, 1930, in Budapest, Hungary, to a family of electrical engineers. In 1943, during World War II, his family emigrated to the United States. He studied electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he earned a Bachelor's degree in 1953 and a Master's degree in 1954. After MIT, he pursued further studies at Columbia University under the guidance of J. R. Ragazzini, and received his Ph.D. in 1957.

From 1957 to 1958, Kalman worked as an engineer at the IBM Research Laboratory. During this time, he made contributions to the development of discrete control systems and the application of Lyapunov theory to control systems. In 1958, Kalman joined the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, founded by Lefschetz, where he worked until 1964, rising from mathematician to deputy director. During this period, he conducted pioneering research in control theory, exploring observability and controllability of control systems, as well as optimal control systems.

During the same period (late 1958 to early 1959), he also developed his most famous work, the Kalman filter. Building on the previous work of Wiener, Kolmogorov, Shannon, and others, Kalman developed a technique for estimating the state vector of a control system using incomplete and noisy measurements. This technique has been widely used, particularly in navigation systems.

In 1964, Kalman joined Stanford University in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Mechanics, and Operations Research. During this period, he focused on the theory of realizations and algebraic systems.

Kalman was an honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1976) and a member of the French Academy of Sciences (1989). He was also a member of the National Academy of Engineering (1991) and a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1994). In addition, he was a member of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.