Sanjoy Mitter

Sanjoy Mitter

https://www.eecs.mit.edu/sanjoy-mitter-interdisciplinary-explorer-dies-at-89/

Sanjoy Mitter, interdisciplinary explorer, dies at 89.
BY JANE HALPERN
August 3, 2023 | Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science


An expert in the theoretical foundations of systems, communication and control, 
Mitter contributed to significant engineering applications, most notably in the
control of interconnected power systems and pattern recognition. 

His career began with a 4-year stint as a Development Engineer with Brown Boveri and Co., Ltd., 
in Baden, Switzerland, before moving on to the Battelle Memorial Institute in Geneva, followed 
by Imperial College (where he served as Fellow in the Central Electricity Research Board from
1962 to 1965), and then Case Western Reserve University (where he taught from 1965 to 1969 before 
joining MIT). A true citizen of the world, Mitter was fluent in both French and German as well 
as English; his first wife, Adriana Mitter Fachini, hailed from Milan, Italy; their marriage 
lasted until her death in 2008 and sprawled between Cambridge and Florence, where they maintained 
two homes. Irvin Schick, co-editor with Theordore E. Djaferis of the seminal System Theory, 
Modeling, and Control: a tribute to Sanjoy Mitter (Springer Science+Business Media, 2000), wrote 
in his introduction to the text that “[Sanjoy and Adriana’s] whereabouts at any given time, much 
like the precise location of subatomic particles, can only be stated probabilistically.” 

Although MIT remained his home base, Mitter’s travels extended to multiple sojourns at other
universities: he was a Professor of Mathematics at the Scuola Normale, in Pisa, Italy from 
1986 to 1996, and held visiting positions at Imperial College, London; University of Groningen, Holland; 
INRIA, France; Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, India; ETH, Zürich, Switzerland; and several other
American universities and institutions, including the University of California, Berkeley and the Los Alamos 
National Laboratories. However, his most profound and lasting imprints were undoubtedly upon the hundreds, 
if not thousands, of students, mentees, co-workers and friends he accumulated during his long 
and notable career at MIT.