2010 Tycho Brahe Award

Recipient: Dr. Arthur Bryson

Citation: A father of modern optimal control, for versatile contributions, theoretical AND practical, for aircraft AND spacecraft – and extraordinary generosity toward students and colleagues everywhere.

Contributions made by Dr. Bryson invariably exhibit versatility. His writings include papers (more than 100) and books, authored and co-authored, for theory and practice, in designing estimators and controls for aircraft and spacecraft.

In combination with vast sets of intangible benefits gratefully acknowledged by his many students, these accomplishments clearly portray contributions on a scale seldom approached. Dr. Bryson has generously mentored students and provided necessary critiques and validation to others’ works.

Dr. Bryson is an honorary fellow of AIAA and an honorary member of IEEE. The various awards he has received span five decades. Among the earliest are membership into the National Academy of Engineering (1970) and the National Academy of Sciences (1973); much more recently he was awarded the Daniel Guggenheim Medal (2009) for a lifetime of seminal contributions to real systems, creating, and applying.