Gene F. Franklin

Gene F. Franklin (July 25, 1927 – August 9, 2012) was an American electrical engineer and control theorist known for his pioneering work towards the advancement of the control systems engineering – a subfield of electrical engineering. Most of his work on control theory was adapted immediately into NASA's U.S. space program, most famously in the control systems for the Apollo missions to the Moon in 1960s–1970s.

He is also noted for his authorship of influential texts on the control system, most notably, Feedback Control of Dynamic Systems, which has been translated into numerous of languages and has received literary prizes as the best book in the discipline of controls.

He received his B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1950, his M.S. in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1952, and his D.E. Sc. degree from Columbia University in 1955. Franklin's 1958 doctoral thesis “Sampled-Data Control Systems” (co-authored by Franklin's dissertation advisor, John R. Ragazzini) introduced digital control to a discipline which had previously operated almost exclusively in the analog domain. This breakthrough allowed control systems to become much more precise and reliable.

Teaching career He taught at Columbia University from 1955 to 1957 before moving to Stanford University, where he was professor emeritus of electrical engineering until his death in August 2012. His research encompassed all aspects of control incorporating digital logic, including adaptive control of both nonlinear systems and systems with multiple-data sampling. He was a recipient of the Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award in 2005 for "fundamental contributions to the theory and practice of digital, modern, adaptive, and multivariable control" and the John R. Ragazzini Award in 1985 for "outstanding contributions and distinguished leadership in automatic control education".

Death On August 9, 2012, he died at Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto at the age of 85.