Jan Camiel Willems

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Jan Camiel Willems
Born(1939-09-18)18 September 1939
Electrical Engineering
InstitutionsUniversity of Groningen;
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Doctoral advisorRoger W. Brockett
Notable studentsKeith Glover;
Arjan van der Schaft;
Henk Nijmeijer;
Harry Trentelman

Jan Camiel Willems (18 September 1939 – 31 August 2013) was a Belgian mathematical system theorist who has done most of his scientific work while residing in the Netherlands and the United States. He is most noted for the introduction of the notion of a dissipative system and for the development of the behavioral approach to systems theory.[1]

Biography

Jan Willems was born in

emeritus professor. Afterwards, he became guest professor at the KU Leuven
. He served terms as chairperson of the European Union Control Association and of the Dutch Mathematical Society (Wiskundig Genootschap). He was managing editor of the SIAM Journal of Control and Optimization and as founding and managing editor of Systems & Control Letters.

Research contributions

In his Ph.D. dissertation, Willems worked on input/output stability. In an often-cited 1972 paper

linear-quadratic-Gaussian control, the construction of the storage function leads to the Kalman–Yakubovich–Popov lemma. In the 1980s Willems worked on the geometric theory of linear systems, where he introduced the notion of almost invariant subspace. Since the 1990s, he has devoted his interest to the development of the behavioral approach to systems theory and control.[pub 2][pub 3]
In the behavioral approach a dynamical system is simply viewed as a family of trajectories. This approach avoids having to separate the system variables into inputs and outputs.

Awards and honors

Willems was a fellow of the

honoris causa of the University of Liège
.

Selected publications

  1. ^ J. C. Willems. Dissipative dynamical systems – Part I: General theory, Part II: Part II: Linear systems with quadratic supply rates , Volume 45, pages 321–351 and 352–393, 1972. Available online http://homes.esat.kuleuven.be/~jwillems/Articles/JournalArticles/1972.1.pdf.
  2. ^ J. Polderman and J. C. Willems. Introduction to Mathematical Systems Theory. Springer-Verlag, New York, 1998. Available online http://wwwhome.math.utwente.nl/~poldermanjw/onderwijs/DISC/mathmod/book.pdf.
  3. ^ J. C. Willems. The behavioral approach to open and interconnected systems: Modeling by tearing, zooming, and linking. Control Systems Magazine, 27:46–99, 2007. Available online http://homes.esat.kuleuven.be/~jwillems/Articles/JournalArticles/2007.1.pdf.

References

  1. ^ "In Memoriam: Prof. dr. ir. Jan C. Willems".
  2. ^ List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society, retrieved 2013-09-01.
  3. ^ Willems, Jan C. (1998). "Open dynamical systems and their control". Doc. Math. (Bielefeld) Extra Vol. ICM Berlin, 1998, vol. III. pp. 697–706.

External links

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