Roger Ware BROCKETT

1938 - 2023

BROCKETT, Roger Ware A Wang Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Emeritus, at Harvard University and a pioneer in the field of control theory, died at Yale New Haven Hospital on Sunday, March 19, of complications from a fall last October at his home in Lexington, MA. He was 84. Professor Brockett taught at Harvard from 1969 to 2011, following six years at MIT. His research inspired a generation of mathematicians. In 1983, he established the Harvard Robotics Laboratory, ushering the university to the forefront of a field poised to explode. A 2011 university announcement noted that "publications by Brockett and his students have defined entirely new areas of research." Roger Brockett was born on October 22, 1938, the youngest of seven children of Roger Lawrence Brockett and Grace Esther (Patch) Brockett. He grew up on a farm in Seville, OH, where hard work, self-sufficiency, and stoicism were everyday virtues. He would take turns with his father and brothers to sleeping alone in a shed in the turkey field to keep foxes at bay. Once, when a sibling altercation (over a football kicked into the farm's silo) resulted in a pitchfork accidentally lodged in his calf, he pulled it out and carried on with his day. He went to Case Institute of Technology (now Case Western Reserve), earning three degrees in eight years and picking up varsity letters in football and basketball. In 1960, he married Carolann Riske, whom he had met in eighth grade. In 1963, shortly before completing his Ph.D., he was offered an assistant professorship at MIT, and he and his wife moved east, settling in Lexington, where they would rear three sons. Though far removed from the farm, Professor Brockett maintained his "early to rise" ethic, waking each day by 5:00 a.m. to tackle math problems with pad and pen. During his career, he advised 62 doctoral candidates, many of whom became leading professors, and he guest-taught at universities around the globe. He authored or co-authored several hundred scholarly papers, his textbook "Finite Dimensional Linear Systems" is considered a classic. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering and received dozens of awards and honors including the Donald P. Eckman Award, the Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award, the IEEE Control Systems Science and Engineering Award, the Rufus Oldenburger Medal, and the Giorgio Quazza Medal for lifetime achievement. A former student, David Dobkin, now professor emeritus of computer science at Princeton, commented in 2011, "Every so often, Roger would see a piece of mathematics or a derived result that was so elegant that he couldn't help himself. He'd circle the result on his chalkboard and write 'Truth and Beauty.'" In addition to his wife, Professor Brockett is survived by his son, Douglas of Menlo Park, CA, Douglas's wife, Rei (Chen); and their children, Roger Jensen, Jane, and Helen; his son, Erik of New York City; his daughter-in-law, Louise (Brewster) Brockett of New York City; and her children, William, John, Thomas, and Roger Ware, II; and his brother, Richard, of Garrettsville, OH, and his wife, Mary Ann (Ross). His eldest son, Mark, of New York City, predeceased him. Funeral Service at Memorial Church, Harvard University, Tuesday, March 28, at 11:00 a.m. Private Interment, Westview Cemetery, Lexington.

(Photo by Eliza Grinnell, Harvard SEAS)

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