Remembering Bruce Francis [Historical Perspectives

Abstract

Although I can't remember exactly when I first met Bruce Francis, I recall having first learned about his research on the internal model principle while he was a graduate student with Murray Wonham at the University of Toronto. It was clear to me early on that this was one very smart and creative individual. After spending a few years at the University of California at Berkeley, Cambridge University, and McGill University, Bruce decided to accept our invitation in 1979 to join the Yale Engineering faculty as an assistant professor. Unfortunately, I did not have too much technical interaction with Bruce during his two years at Yale because I was having some personal problems. During his time at Yale, Bruce began to move away from the types of research problems he had done at Berkeley and Cambridge. George Zames had a big influence on him, so toward the end of his stay at Yale, Bruce started to work on what was to become H3 optimal control. Just a few years after he left Yale, his first monograph, A First Course in H3 Control Theory, was published.