Professor Emeritus Dimitri Bertsekas, influential computer scientist and prolific writer, dies at 83 | MIT News
Dimitri Bertsekas PhD ’71, Jerry McAfee (1940) Emeritus Professor of Engineering in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), principal investigator in the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS), and Fulton Professor of Computational Decision Making at Arizona State University, died June 3, in Massachusetts at his home in Belmont. He was 83 years old.
During his career, Bertsekas’ research expanded, and had a definite impact on several fields, including optimization, control, large-scale computing, reinforcement learning, and artificial intelligence. He has worked as a consultant in various private companies; editor of several scientific journals; founder of the publishing company, Athena Scientific; and chief scientific advisor to Bayforest Technologies, an investment firm based in London. However, his lasting impact may have come from his extensive writing and his contributions to more than 20 influential books, monographs, and textbooks, as well as his large network of students, teachers, friends, and collaborators.
Bertsekas received an undergraduate degree from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, before receiving his MS in electrical engineering from George Washington University in 1969, and his PhD in electrical engineering from MIT in 1971. He began his faculty career at Stanford University, where he spent three years, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he spent 9 MIT more before returning 9 MIT before returning. of EECS until 2019, during which time he became a full-time faculty member at Arizona State University in Tempe. Along the way, Bertsekas taught, mentored, and mentored the students who would eventually work with him at all four institutions.
“Dimitri played an important role in my career,” said Asu Ozdaglar, head of the EECS department at MIT. “I decided to change my research focus after taking his indirect development phase. The conceptual clarity and mathematical rigor he brought to every subject, combined with his ability to connect theory to important problems established a foundation that has continued to inform my academic work in the following years.” Another MIT alumnus, Jinane Abounadi, now executive director of the MIT Sandbox Innovation Fund Program, still remembers Bertsekas’ training as outstanding during his time as a student at MIT: “I feel very fortunate to have Dimitri as my professor and mentor. I had the opportunity to learn about optimization, dynamic programming, and real neuro-dynamic programming.”
A former student at the University of Illinois, Steven E. Shreve recalls being impressed by Bertsekas’ approach to indirect optimization and asking if Bertsekas would consider being his PhD advisor. “Instead of answering my question directly, Dimitri gave me the first draft of his manuscript, which eventually became his book ‘Dynamic Programming and Stochastic Control,’ and asked me to review it,” recalls Shreve, now Orion Hoch University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Scientific Statistics at Carnegie Mellon University. “In this manuscript, I studied the theory of dynamic systems and learned many important special cases. When I talked with Dimitri as I read, I received individual instruction. When the book finally appeared, Dimitri graciously accepted my participation, as if I had done him a favor, rather than doing it the other way around.” The gambit was typical of Bertsekas’s understated approach to mentorship; after a successful first collaboration, Bertsekas organized a research fellowship to Shreve and challenged him to solve a fundamental question in a dynamic system. “I needed to read a lot of theory to think about the question he asked,” recalls Shreve, whose work on the problem was combined with Bertsekas’ notes to write their co-authored book “Stochastic Optimal Control: The Discrete Time Case.”
“We are working with Dimitri [that book] that’s how I learned to write,” said Shreve. “I learned from Dimitri that if you want to be recognized for your research, you must present it so that others will want to read it, and I learned how to do that.”
The clarity and elegance of Bertsekas’ explanatory style can be his academic trademark. “Everyone recognized Dimitri’s talents as a writer, but he went above and beyond, organizing all the subjects into something that was completely understandable and organized,” said Robert Gallager, professor emeritus of electrical engineering at MIT, who co-authored a 1987 book with Bertsekas titled “Data Networks.” “The field was changing rapidly at the time, with a factor-of-2 reduction every two years in computing costs, and optical fiber on the horizon for transmission. Dimitri and I understood certain parts of the field, some fast learning. Dimitri was an ideal partner in this, able to quickly translate strong concepts into simple but accurate explanations and his overall knowledge and we were able to combine my knowledge.”
Bertsekas’ close colleague at LIDS, Munther Dahleh, recalls, “what always impressed me was that, through his writing, one could almost hear Dimitri speaking directly to the student. His practice, clarity of thought, and unique perspective are well-found in his books. It shows not only his deep technical contribution, but also his passion for teaching and his desire to teach and his deep study of John in his combined book. … Tsitsiklis in the neuro-dynamic system is an anticipatory tour de force and helped define many ideas that later became key to reinforcement learning and almost dynamic systems.
Tsitsiklis himself remembers well the process of co-writing with Bertsekas: “For Dimitri, research was a creative process, which combines creativity and creativity that we usually call art.” The definition of art and its practice was a topic that greatly interested Bertsekas, and he explored it in detail in his 2025 essay, “Academia, Art, and Life,” an attempt to meaningfully divide the creative profession into three broadly defined roles — the expert, the craftsman, and the artist — and to explore the overlap between the three types of practice. Apart from his clear and vivid writing, Bertsekas was known for his strong clear eye, a talent he put to good use not only to develop the illustrations for all his books, but to take memorable and artistically inspired photographs of his travels around the world.
Collaborator and long-time friend David Castañón, now a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Boston University, remembers Bertsekas as a true man of the Revolution who found inspiration in countless sources: “Dimitri had an insatiable curiosity for algorithmic ideas, both theory and practice. algorithms) … Whenever we met, Dimitri introduced new concepts of interest, designed and carried out numerical experiments, and produced results: Dimitri’s artistic talents will take over: designing concept diagrams, text editing and calculations for the papers to be completed by the publishing company Athena Scientific, where Dimitri and his colleagues produce beautiful and attractive educational volumes.” Tsitsiklis agrees, noting, “for Dimitri, [research] it was about finding meaning, uncovering the ‘correct’ way of looking at a subject, enriching it, and conveying it in a clear way through his many writings.”
Many of the 20-plus books authored or co-authored by Bertsekas have been accepted for use as textbooks at MIT in subjects including data networks, nonlinear programming, dynamic programming, network optimization, parallel integration and distribution, neuro-dynamic programming, convex analysis and optimization, probability, and reinforcement learning. Stephen Boyd, Samsung Professor at the Stanford School of Engineering, testifies to the great impact of the works collected by Bertsekas: “Generations of researchers in optimization, control, and many related areas studied these topics in Dimitri’s clear and well-written books.
That influence can be measured by the large number of awards and honors Bertsekas has accumulated during his career, including the INFORMS 1997 Prize for Research Excellence at the Interface Between Functional Research and Computer Science for Neuro-Dynamic Programming, the 2001 ACC John R. Ragazzini Award, the 2001 WCC Award, the 2009 ICC Award, the 2009 CC Award The Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award for “contributions to the foundations of deterministic and stochastic optimization methods in systems and control,” the 2014 Khachiyan Award for Lifetime Achievement in Development, the 2015 SIAM/MOS George B. Dantzig Award, and the 2022 IEEE System Control Award. Together with his colleague John Tsitsiklis, he was awarded the 2018 INFOMS John von Neumann Theory Prize for the contribution of the research papers “Parallel and Distributed Computation” and “Neuro-Dynamic Programming.” In 2001, Bertsekas was elected to the US National Academy of Engineering for “pioneering contributions to basic research, practice and development education/control theory.”
However, a more personal measure of Bertsekas’ influence can be taken from the warmth and affection with which his friends, colleagues, and former students alike remember him. Another writer John Tsitsiklis wrote, “I was very fortunate to be one of his students, and to experience his warmth and friendship.” His former student at MIT, Angelia Nedich, later became Bertsekas’ colleague at Arizona State University. He remembers: “Dimitri had an extraordinary mind, a gifted soul that enlightened those of us who seek him, but at the same time he was very humble as he enjoyed the simple moments of life, drinking good coffee, good food, or a glass of spicy margarita on our Southwest trip. I like to remember him that way.”
Former student Benjamin Van Roy, now a professor at Stanford, wrote about Bertsekas’ transformation from authority figure to friend (and the subject of friendly teasing). “I remember the scary words from the top PhD students when I started my PhD journey at LIDS. Some called Dimitri “immortal.” Another comment that I remember well – and that I often remind Dimitri about – was: “Professor Bertsekas is a handsome man!” Their relationship continued long after Van Roy’s graduation. “Dimitri was precious to humanity: one of the greatest scholars of our time, a Renaissance man, and a great example. I was privileged to be among the many he taught, and I was even more privileged to consider him a lifelong friend.” Yuchao Li, a postdoc taught by Bertsekas at Arizona State University, remembers his mentor as an almost endless source of both inspiration and support: “To me, Professor Bertsekas was like a loving father, full of endless wisdom. … He seemed to know everything, yet he remained very humble and open-minded. He was always eager to help me, even when I had a little difficulty in my life. He instilled in me an abiding faith in the best qualities of people, and I will strive to carry that faith forward.”
Bertsekas was preceded in death by his son Costas. He is survived by his wife Joanna Bertsekas (née Palashas); his son Telis Bertsekas and his wife Wendy Bertsekas; and three grandchildren, Melina, Alexandros, and Leonidas.
